

Not the first to market?  Competitor has traction?  You're screwed. - jdg
http://jdg.net/post/29673368

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iamdave
I'm sorry but I disagree wholeheartedly with this post (and the way you
presented it). Competition is healthy for any market, and for the businesses
in that market. Giving consumers the option to choose between services means
more flexibility to improve on what you have, and how you plan to introduce
it.

Yes, Tumblr is a great application backed by some very competent developers
out there, but have you given a look at Chyrp (<http://www.chyrp.net>)? The
immediate user may not directly associate it with a tumblelog from the very
beginning, but if you look at the way it's created, even look at the code it's
obvious that's just what the application is, and it's doing incredibly well on
it's own two feet.

Market economies are all about competition, supply and demand. I think you
should take another look at what you've written, and what's going on in the
web right now.

~~~
jdg
Chyrp and Tumblr are two different markets.

Tumblr is hosted, Chyrp isn't. There is an obvious differentiation there and
it's two unique sets of users.

I agree that competition is healthy. I also agree that there is more than
enough room (in most markets) for more than one player. However, once one
player has a large amount of traction in the market it is difficult to uproot
that player unless you are either a) uniquely different (and not just
differentiated on features!), or b) you have an actual marketing budget unlike
90% of web2.0 apps out there.

If you don't, quit wasting your time.

~~~
iamdave
"Chyrp and Tumblr are two different markets..Tumblr is hosted, Chyrp isn't."

Not entirely (I mean if you look at it rhetorically, you have to host Chyrp
somewhere but I understand the dichotomy you argue). If essentially the
bottom-line of both applications is to allow the end user to publish content,
they're not at all different. They are different in the way you mentioned,
hosted vs. non, but not by much. Tumblr does allow you to use a line of
Javascript and transcode a Tumblr feed to another site with very little
effort.

Chyrp has all the same functionality that Tumblr does, text posts, links,
video, audio, and conversations. In that sense, they are almost one in the
same; the only differentiation is that yes, Tumblr has more "traction" if by
traction you mean 'userbase'.

I think the issue we debate here is market dominance. Tumblr clearly has this,
however Chyrp is still an up and coming engine that performs the same tasks
with more options for server-side customization, and user interaction. This
alone has granted Chyrp a very respectable number of users.

Marketing is less about budgeting, and more about effectiveness and utility of
your product. The WoM movement proves this everyday, and with more and more
flexibility in social content development and usage, marketing is essentially
being performed everyday on YouTube, even Facebook by the users - much less
large, seasoned companies.

