Pirates of Silicon Valley [Part 2.0]
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”
-Charles Caleb Colton (1780 – 1832)
There is an obvious trend that exists within today’s internet-based businesses. Companies are “stealing” other companies’ ideas, concepts, and functionality. Well, stealing may not be the most accurate description. I believe the term borrowing may better sum up what is actually happening. In any event, this post discusses the recent events of companies like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, and Google; and how these internet giants and revolutionaries play an integral role in each other’s future development and innovation strategies.
Facebook to Stream “Real Time”
New Facebook: Twitter + FriendFeed + 175 million users
-VentureBeat Headline March 4, 2009
Perhaps the most noteworthy example of “Valley borrowing” involves the redesign of Facebook’s homepage. In an effort to remain fresh, Facebook has taken a page out of Twitter’s playbook and will now be augmenting users’ ‘News Feed’ to incorporate a “real-time” stream of actions, comments, etc.
Twitter has garnered massive attention for their real time communication platform, and for good reason. It seems as if everyone is now re-focusing their sites on incorporating some level of “real-time” communication. It will be interesting to see how Facebook incorporates this microblogging functionality within their huge social network; and most importantly, how users will react and take to it.
FriendFeed Offers Up Free R&D
I had dinner with Scoble and Louis Gray, they both said that Friendfeed was Facebook’s R&D Department. Interesting, I think there’s some truth to it.
Maybe the biggest victim of “Valley borrowing” has been felt by FriendFeed. So much so that they have even been referred to as the R&D department for several web-based companies. This aggregation/life-streaming service has been imitated by various internet companies, but none more popular then by both Facebook and Google.
So What’s the Takeaway?
Imagine, for example, Nike, Inc. (NYSE: NIKE) released all of its product details, manufacturing processes, and company resources to the public. In other words, everybody would have the ability to see how Nike manufactures any particular product, the costs associated, and where the resources are coming from. This is a pretty wild concept for most. But this describes how a web-based business exists to the general audience, and most importantly, to current and potential competitors; completely open and virtually barrier-free. In essence, everybody becomes a source for research and development.
This illustrates why the web have matured so quickly. Web businesses constantly feed off of their surroundings, augmenting, tweaking, and innovating on top of previous platforms. And this is exactly why certain web technologies are adopted in such large quantities. Imagine, again, that all companies operated like the Nike example above. What sort of companies would take shape from this freedom of information? Most likely, they would be some of the most efficient, and cost effective companies ever created. And that is exactly what we are seeing in today’s web firms; some of the most productive “web hybrids” to date.
It boils down to the remaining open and transparent. And we have seen the benefits in doing this. Twitter’s open application programming interface (API) standard allowed the service to reach audiences well beyond its initial reach. We are starting to see more and more web firms gravitate towards open API’s as a result.
The type of comeptition created by “Valley borrowing” is unbelievably fast-paced. In just a matter of months, a successful web firm may find themselves forced to shift focus in effort to keep from becoming obsolete. Web firms are now expected to create the most complete platform possible for their customers/users. And isn’t that what business is all about? Creating the best most efficient product for the customer?
