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Michael Arrington is Destroying America
Josh Kopelman has a great post entitled 53,651 in which he posits that a large number of tech ventures/projects are targeting the same “early adopter” audience that reads TechCrunch. Could not agree more. But beyond the focus on “geeks” at the expense of the “common man”, I think there is a focus on “plus-one” features to “kill” the previous generation (i.e. Digg killer, bloglines killer, etc). Arrington is all over this, and from an analyst’s point of view, it’s good: each marginal iteration is not only a chance for a new review, it’s also a way to examine how new features help/hurt on the margin. So Arrington writes up a review or profile, and his 53,651 readers flock to the reviewed service, and some fraction actually sign up and use it for a day or a week. And then nothing.
Mike Arrington provides a useful service, but his approach of looking at features and new technologies is hardly the only one, and is antithetical to good business. Features are irrelevant - problems need to be solved. A successufl business wil subtract pain or add pleasure to a client/customer/consumer. Differentiation can be addressing a pain that a group has not had relieved before, addressing a group that has not been addressed before, or bringing a better solution to compete with the existing solutions.
This last situation is the most disastrous strategically but is the one encouraged by this ”plus one” feature creep. Making things worse is the walled garden effect, where you build everything, eating a large amount of expense in development (and increasing the user’s barrier to extracting value) and compete on the basis of the marginal feature. Difficult, and to my mind insane.
Go where the other guy aint - that won’t get a review in TechCrunch, but it is the basis of a more sustainable competitive advantage.
May 16th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
[…] On the heels of my prior post with a funny title, I confess to inspiration from the ineffable Mr. Arrington. In his report AOL to Release YouTube Clone he discusses what I see as a huge problem with the currently fashionable plus-one strategies: I am seeing an increasing trend of the big guys simply copying what successful startups are doing. AOL with this product and AIM Spaces. Google with Google Notepad and a flurry of other projects, etc. The only large company that is even experimenting with unproven concepts at this point is Microsoft with its various Live.com ideas. I’d like to see more experimenting at the big company level. […]
May 24th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
[…] 52 Bicycles has a nice little post about how many Web 2.0 startups are too focused on making the “plus one” killer app. … I think there is a focus on “plus-one” features to “kill” the previous generation (i.e. Digg killer, bloglines killer, etc). Arrington is all over this, and from an analyst’s point of view, it’s good: each marginal iteration is not only a chance for a new review, it’s also a way to examine how new features help/hurt on the margin. So Arrington writes up a review or profile, and his 53,651 readers flock to the reviewed service, and some fraction actually sign up and use it for a day or a week. And then nothing. […]
October 9th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
[…] Purple Cow by Seth Godin (Buy from Amazon) discusses the value of being remarkable, and how it is necessary to be remarkable to get attention in an increasingly splintered mediascape. But when listening to a recent podcast of TalkCrunch, I heard the America-Destroyer, Michael Arrington, use this principle to explain why he thought that paid marketing was essentially unnecessary. He posited that if you were really worth talking about, people would talk about you. For free. Because that’s the magical world Arrington lives in. […]
October 27th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
[…] (Eventually I will get to accuse Dharmesh of doing something horrible like this or this, but so far, he denies me the funny by churning out the level-headed winners…) […]
December 19th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
[…] But it is the entrepreneur who must resist the temptation of this end-stage and instead focus on the early stage - how is this going to be a viable business before it hits the end of the game. And it is tempting to think about how one is going to get “big” fast, growth (even more dangerous when measured by non-paying users, rather than revenue, let alone profits) is what gets one in the news - the America-Destroyer is always talking up hypergrowth stories of these startups. […]
January 13th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
[…] Reading the America-Destroyer’s op-ed piece on whether we are in a bubble, I got interested in the seeming conflation between software and content sites. Here’s what got me thinking: But I disagree that Web 2.0 companies cannot become sustainable businesses. The Network Effect is still the most powerful force driving Internet success today. People don’t, for example, go to Digg because it has great software. The original Digg, as launched, cost Kevin Rose less than $2,000 to create. Anyone can create a Digg clone, and many have. The reason Digg is, and will continue to be, successful is because of the community it has created. People go to Digg because everyone else goes to Digg, and every new user who submits stories and/or votes occasionally adds value to the whole network. The Network Effect is also driving Facebook’s success, and YouTube’s. None of these companies have interesting software. All of them have an incredibly valuable community. All of these companies have to work hard to keep their lead, but it is nearly impossible for new entrants to catch up. […]