
10 Greatest Stolen Ideas In The Web - brk
http://en.miku.ws/20080322/10-greatest-stolen-ideas-in-the-web/
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parker
Yeah, I'm not sure ideas are stolen as much as iterated and improved upon.
Accusing people of stealing ideas can be a pretty slippery slope... itList may
have some of the same elements of digg, but didn't put it all together in the
same way. I suppose this makes them similar ideas, but entirely different
products.

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aston
Bigger lesson here is that first-mover isn't really worth that much if you're
going to get it wrong. Act early on trends, but don't be first; let someone
else make the mistakes for you.

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pibefision
Ideas are nothing. Execution is everything.

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pibefision
I would like to have a black t-shirt with this phrase, and use it on every
Anything-camp event out there.

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dbreunig
It would be really ironic if none of us printed said shirt.

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rrival
That's a great idea.

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mixmax
This brings out the whole "what is an idea worth" question again. And my stand
is that it is worth next to nothing.

Take Skype, which is one of the companies mentioned in the article. No, they
were not the first company ever to do voip. This, of course, begs the
question: Why didn't the first movers become huge successes? After all they
had a lead of around ten years.

Because of execution.

The reason skype became a success was not that they had an idea that was so
awesome the money just started pouring in - it was years of hard work, good
design and smartness that got them there. I know that they first tried to
raise capital in Denmark, but nobody understood what the heck they were
talking about, so they had to move abroad and try there. They were basically
so set on the idea that they, after having been put down by almost all VC's in
their own country they moved abroad to get funding. Their determination is
what made them successful, it had very little to do with the idea.

They might just as well have started a filesharing network and had success
with that. Oh wait... They did...

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eusman
their determination was due to the fact that they believed in their idea. so
it's impossible to had very little to do with the idea

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mixmax
As you say their determination was due to the fact that they believed in their
idea - not that their idea was particularly great.

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eusman
i agree with you that they may had any other idea and be determined about it,
but if the idea wasn't what people needed it wouldn't have the enormous
success it had.

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Tichy
I disagree with the notion that those are examples of idea theft.

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brian19
I would be interested to know what differs the top runners and others.
Buzz/Money/Connection?

Is there really first comer advantage in web2.0 ? looks like there isn't.

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brk
Actually, I've often felt that "first comer advantage" is more of a
DISadvantage, in all aspects of tech, not just Web2.0. I think that overall
there are more historic examples of the first-comers not being the dominant
market leaders. This goes all the way back to the dawn of the PC (CP/m vs, MS-
DOS, VisiCalc vs. Lotus 123 vs Excel, WordPerfect vs. MS-WORD, etc.).

It is difficult and expensive to create a new product, and thus a new market.
It takes a lot of time effort and energy to figure out what people want and
how to deliver it. Almost every new technology startup has a 20 man-years
worth of features and ideas that they just don't have time to implement.
Similarly, they often have 20 man-years worth of work wasted on features that
didn't get used or pan out the way expected.

Contrast this to a "second-comer" company who only has to look at what is
currently working for the "first-comer" and look at what is missing that
customers want (things on that 20 man-year long list of RFE's). This second-
comer has a much more pinpointed goal, they know better what they want to
develop and how it should look in the end. They also do not have to wait for a
customer base to develop, or expend marketing dollars to create demand.
Additionally they can piggy-back on the marketing dollars that the first-comer
invested (Check out bar.org, it's like foo.com but without all the annoying
baz).

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hussong
The early bird catches the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese :-)

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graywh
The concept of wiki wasn't stolen, but given.

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jraines
[meta] - this is one of the most awesome linkbaiting headlines I've seen here.

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nazgulnarsil
The vast majority of "new" ideas are just several old ideas tied to together,
or presented in some new way. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.

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russ
Good artists copy. Great artists steal. -- Picasso

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stillmotion
Digg isn't "Social Bookmarking". It wasn't stolen and it is very original.

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ojbyrne
The whole article is kind of warped by it's insistence on the word "stolen."
Digg owed a lot to websites that came before it, but there was no stealing. As
a matter of fact, Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us provided a lot of useful
advice early on.

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rokhayakebe
the moral of the story is "Thou shall not be an innovator. Thou shall copy and
have a bigger Mouth"

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boucher
An idea is not an innovation. MP3 players were nothing new when the iPod came
out, but the iPod was the most innovative Apple product in years, which is
saying a lot at a company like Apple. The iPod remains one of the most
innovative consumer electronic devices on the market.

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mynameishere
_The iPod remains one of the most innovative consumer electronic devices on
the market_

It seems fairly straightforward to me, and not a major change from the Walkman
of the late 1970s--a device that was actually innovative, but still fairly
straightforward.

