
Was Facebook a derivative idea when it started? - maram
In his first lecture with the startup school @sama said that &quot;the most successful startups are not derivatives, they are not a copy of something else that was working pretty well&quot;. Then gave an example of FB and its clones. 
That got me thinking of the time when FB started. Wouldn&#x27;t you say that market very saturated for social apps then? 
I am not sure if I misinterpreted what he said but it looked like he was advocating for first-mover advantage as opposed to second-mover advantage. 
What do you think?
======
brudgers
Facebook was a social networking _website_ for Harvard undergraduates. It
predates the iPhone and what we mean by _apps_ today. It predates the
existence of an 'industry best practice' of targeting software at young adults
-- a strategy the current incarnation of Facebook has long since pivoted away
from as generation Y has entered the market for SUV's with third row seating.
Now its for grandparents to see photos of their grandchildren -- also not
derivative except from email.

What Facebook (and Youtube) leveraged is rapidly increasing network capacity.
MySpace was built on the idea that people would share HTML and text with the
occasional image or sound.

------
bediger4000
_Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it
again._

[http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/42217.html](http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/42217.html)

Th USA has a false narrative around originality, good ideas, and success in
the market. The entire notion of "Intellectual Property" is almost certainly
false, and at the very least is hindering all of us.

------
joshteng
I had the exact same question. I found what he said a little contradictory.
Before using Facebook, I was using Friendster.

Instead of taking him word for word, I'm taking it as building a product 10x
better than any other solutions for the same problem.

------
vgy7ujm
FB was definitively both a clone and stolen idea. Being first is not enough to
succeed. Timing, marketing, sheer luck etc. is just as important.

