[samg]

I think you are oversimplifying "the idea". Google's idea wasn't that "people will want to search online." Google's insightful, interesting idea that was then well-executed was the PageRank algorithm.

Geocities, Myspace and Facebook were all very different ideas. If the first two had executed better, all 3 would probably still co-exist.

[jacquesm]

> Google's insightful, interesting idea that was then well-executed was the PageRank algorithm.

That doesn't parse but I think I get what you mean. PageRank was not a new idea. Citations in the scientific world form a graph and these had been used before to determine the relevance of a paper. What was new was to apply such a mechanism to the problem of searching the web for relevant content but for the end-user of the service it did not matter much how the results were arrived at, as long as they were relevant and in the case of a switch from one engine to another, more relevant. So even if the basic idea ("people want to search for stuff online") was the same it was the implementation of that idea that mattered. The fact that google was lightning fast helped a lot too and that by itself would have made some people switch (after all, speed matters), and this is a very clear point of execution rather than 'an idea'.

> Geocities, Myspace and Facebook were all very different ideas. If the first two had executed better, all 3 would probably still co-exist.

MySpace still exists, Geocities still exists but not through Yahoo!, there are several mirrors only there won't be page updates. There are also newer re-implementations of Geocities. And yet, FaceBook rules, the network effects they baked in are just too strong and that's a very important part of why I think their execution was excellent. They realized that the other parties had not gotten that aspect of the idea right and by doing that right they more or less locked up the market. FaceBook will be here for a long long time to come.

[vinceguidry]

> And yet, FaceBook rules, the network effects they baked in are just too strong and that's a very important part of why I think their execution was excellent.

Are the network effects really that strong? I've never seen another company even come close to providing the value that Facebook does. I feel like if there were really a social networking idea that was better right now than Facebook, then that company would have already found a way around the network effect. For example, plenty of people have challenged Craigslist first by crawling their site, however illegal that is. None yet have succeeded, but that tells me that CL just provides a better product.

I think the real reason nobody has dethroned Facebook yet is that Facebook meets everybody's needs and hasn't yet gotten complacent. Perhaps they'll make some strategic missteps in the future a la Microsoft and someone else will eat their lunch, but right now, they're still the best available. Ditto Apple, ditto Google.

Examining ideas is important in that it can tell you what not to try to do.

[nostrademons]

I'd argue that there were social-networking platforms that were better than Facebook years before it came out. LiveJournal, for instance, was one of the few online places where you actually make new friends instead of just collating the ones you already had. I just hung out this Thanksgiving with a couple who I met on LJ over a decade ago; they also met doing LJ support, and at their wedding 7 years ago, about 3/4 of the guests were friends from LiveJournal, many of whom had never met in person before. A lot of the features that Google+ has "innovated" with (Circles/friends-groups, Communities) or that have Facebook has recently added (mood icons, threaded commenting) were things that LJ had a decade ago.

Facebook won because the killer feature that distinguishes a social network is who's on it. They started out at the most high-status house on the most high-status college in the most high-status country, and then spread like wildfire from there. By contrast, LJ was popular with fandom and with Russians, neither of which are groups that ordinary, affluent, socially-connected Americans would much like to hang out with.

[rdlecler1]

>I've never seen another company even come close to providing the value that Facebook does.

Google provides far more value than Facebook.

[jacquesm]

I really think the network effects on FaceBook are what keeps it where it is. I know people that would love leave FB, except for one little detail: all their friends, family and co-workers are on it and they use it for everything from planning birthday parties to holidays and staying in touch. That's a very difficult thing to attack head-on.

Craigslist is another example of such a service, you need the market and the goods, if you have only one (for instance by crawling CL) then you still won't have the market.

That's a really nice example of 'good enough' execution combined with a chicken-and-the-egg situation for any followers.

Of some things there can only be one, something similar happened in NL with the Marktplaats website, when Ebay wanted to gain marketshare here they found they just could not beat it so they ended up buying it.

[vinceguidry]

I think you're taking idea effects and clothing them in the trappings of execution. In order for a business to get really big, it has to provide 10x the value that the current incumbent provides. Microsoft beat out IBM because software had many times the potential that hardware of the time had. Sure, IBM failed horribly on software, but that's because IBM didn't think software was important, not because it couldn't build decent software. The thinking behind the idea gives you the zeal to execute on it.

If the idea is right, meaning it is 10x better than the current best offering, and it's executed properly, then network effects can go screw themselves. Nobody took search seriously before Google did, that gave them a leg up over the competition. (who were they again?) It's just not the right time to start a Facebook or Craigslist challenger. Maybe in a few or ten years the market will change such that most people interact with the Internet differently enough that it's worth building a social network to serve their needs. Right now it would be foolish to do so, because their needs are already being more-or-less perfectly served by Facebook, ditto for CL.