

Ripe for Disruption - lsinger
http://jacquesmattheij.com/ripe-for-disruption

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andrewljohnson
LinkedIn just isn't for Jacques, it's not actually ripe for disruption. People
like to condemn LinkedIn's tactics for engagement, and devoted indie + company
salarymen like to condemn it for being a useless spammy recruiter hell.

But, end of the day, LinkedIn is still a beast, has a tremendous network
effect to defeat, and actually works for its millions of users:

* many developers actually like to get the various recruiter and big co contacts

* for business guys, LinkedIn actually works to make credible cold contacts with people who would be interested in doing business

* the emails that tell you when your friend switches jobs are useful and important in the same way Facebook's birthday reminders are

* LinkedIn is doing a decent job further managing the product - it has gotten more useful over the years

So what if you think endorsements are lame and sometimes LinkedIn accidentally
tells you a profile update means a new job, when it doesn't. So what if you
are a special snowflake who, with hundreds of thousands of others, doesn't
find LinkedIn useful, and too aggressive? It's those very engagement tactics
that make sure the network is complete and the metadata is fresh.

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crisnoble
Wait, why are Facebook's birthday reminders important?

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xerophtye
Its gives you an excuse to remind someone that you exist in their friends
list. Socializing/Networking is actually more important on LinkedIn than on
FB, because people usually have (or have had) social relations with FB people
IRL, but on LinkedIn you need those excuses because otherwise you msotly just
have business relations

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davidw
I'm not so sure.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation)

To actually disrupt an industry, there has to be a change that makes it
possible, or some new niche or angle to attack a problem from.

I don't really see that in a lot of these examples.

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btrombley
Agreed, the author is using "disruption" to mean "compete with". Microsoft did
not really disrupt IBM, it just changed the competitive landscape.

The Innovator's Dilemma has a much more nuanced view of disruption: an
inferior product that ends up beating the entrenched player because of a side-
benefit. It's pretty relevant if you want to take on eBay, LinkedIn, or
Google: you're not going to build a better search engine than Google, but you
can build one that respects privacy, runs without ads, etc. if that's what
users really care about.

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davidw
Crossing the Chasm also talks about this: it's very, very difficult to beat an
established company at their own game. You're more likely to do so by
attacking a niche they are not interested in, or are weak in, and growing from
there.

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jacquesm
Establishing a beach-head is a very slow road but it has a good chance of
success. What I'm getting at in the post is that there are some game-changing
circumstances at play since those companies were founded and they all appear
to have huge, not so easy to fix blind spots. That creates opportunities.
Compare ebay or Google with Amazon and Zappos. I definitely do not see Amazon
and Zappos as vulnerable when it comes to their core, Google is at its core
not a search engine anymore but an advertising company and exactly there they
are left wanting. Ebay is hurting badly right now, someone that moves fast
might be able to inflict serious damage before the window of opportunity
closes again.

Naturally, none of this is going to be easy. But I think it just might be
doable.

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beat
I think EBay will be death by a thousand cuts... niche sites offering similar
functionality (national/international auctions, community trust rating), but
targeted a particular interest.

My example here is Reverb.com, an online auction site for musical instruments
and gear (particularly rock instruments, not classical). Reverb.com provides a
gorgeous, Etsy-like interface, terrific targeted marketing, etc. It's backed
by a major used instrument vendor (Chicago Music Exchange), and is quickly
gaining momentum. Once sellers can have the same chance of sale and the same
kinds of prices that EBay fetches, and buyers have enough selection to make
the site really sticky (it's practically designed for window-shopping), some
people will simply stop using EBay altogether in favor of Reverb.

Etsy is another case in point. They've been around for a while, but they offer
a _far_ superior customer and vendor experience within their fairly narrow
niche of handmade crafts. I'm sure we'll also see custom car seller sites
(most of the old ones are as antiquated and ugly as EBay), toy collector
sites, all the things EBay covers in its one-size-fits-all approach.

EBay is lousy for window-shopping, but that's what collectors and nerds want
to do. That's where the disruption will happen.

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justinpaulson
I would not say these very large and engrained services are "ripe for
disruption" unless you totally revolutionize the feature-set of such products.
I think things that are ripe for disruption are things like traditional IRL
services...like how Uber is greatly disrupting taxi services, for instance. I
would like to see disrupts in grocery stores, point-of-sale systems, and other
tangible services that can be revolutionized with new technologies. I think
disruption is more about an industry than taking on a single company.

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tempodox
If anyone is _Ripe for Disruption_ , it's data carriers, especially on mobile.
Those crooks practise legalised piracy at the highest level. And they are
entrenched all right. Any ideas?

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Ihmahr
Mesh networks. But I think those don't have a business model.

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gerbal
And it's very low throughput/high latency.

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Ihmahr
I actually don't think so. If it is just for contacting people in your
neighborhood, then it works fine. If it is for people in the same city, then
the city could organize something as a utility. Mesh doesn't have to mean 'on
every users' device' or even p2p.

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mark_l_watson
That was a pretty good article that appealed to me because I don't like the
trend of fewer but much larger companies crowding out competitors. Google is a
particularly interesting case because their income stream from ads really
might not work long term on mobile.

I have never been much of a fan of Facebook but seeing how most of my family's
use of the Internet is wrapped up in Facebook, they might be around for a very
long time.

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koj
Yes. I don't see my none-IT friends/family jumping off the
Facebook/ebay/Flickr ship even if a better alternative came along no matter
what the benefits.

I agree with the article but Myspace and Yahoo are commonly used examples of
ousted market leaders but the market was young(er) when they were disrupted.

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burkestar
Disruptive innovation is often more about a superior business model than
better technology. Technology is an enabler.

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pbreit
I can't take someone seriously who says "I don’t see the value of LinkedIn".
That's obtuse or willfully ignorant. You don't have to like LinkedIn but it's
immense value as the world's resume database is patently obvious.

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general_failure
I am kind of surprised facebook has not been disrupted. Even more surprising
is that nobody is even trying. People just throw their hands in the air and
say nobody will leave facebook and all the existing people are well and truly
settled there.

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sosborn
It can be discouraging when a company with the resources of Google tries and
fails.

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21echoes
wait... ads, photos, and niche social networks, are "ripe" for disruption?
haven't those three industries been the focus of some 90% of startups for the
last 10 years at least?

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greendata
Google Adwords is absolutely ripe for disruption. Actually all of Google's
services, except Mail and Search, are not great.

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w_t_payne
Other companies ripe for disruption:

* SAP * PTC * EMC

(Please! please! please! please!)

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pm
Not sure who PTC or EMC are...

I worked at Bridgestone Golf for a few months (a tyre company that also made
golf items, go figure), and because we were situated in their manufacturing
plant, we were lucky enough to use SAP for our sales and distribution.

It was the most horrendous experience of my life, and I sat there thinking
that surely there would be a part of this beast that could disrupted. However,
SAP is such a sprawling mess that where would you start?

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justncase80
Cable Television. Please, for the love of science, someone disrupt this soon
:(

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josephlord
Isn't Netflix already doing this?

The disruption is surely TV without channels and relying on the Internet for
distribution. How do you picture Canle TV disruption looking?

