What about Twitter's actions that are yet to come?
And why not just try? What if the open platform succeeds? Even if the chance of success is 0.01%, it is worth trying. Also, a million such attempts by million such teams can fail. Only one team needs to succeed. Once.
Hmmm. If we look at some past examples of cases in the consumer internet space where a new entrant overtook an entrenched player (e.g. Google vs. other search engines and Facebook vs. Myspace), I think you need to have something new and compelling about your application to drive adoption. I don't know of any cases where just cloning an existing app was successful for a startup. Has movement to a new player every been driven by openness concerns?
What can you do that is different from Twitter and cannot easily be copied by them?
If enough of us "nerds" get pissed of by the actions of Twitter, can't we ourselves provide the initial momentum for an open alternative, with HN having 80k daily uniques and all? Does it have to have better features? (although that will help)
It's all about critical mass. If techies who care about it being open switch over and then it becomes the most popular amongst HN readers, then it can grow out from there.
If chance of success * probable value of outcome + (the converse of failure) - cost > 0, it's worth it. Is that really the case here? Personally I think you are overestimating chance of success by a wide margin.
That is a good method to make personal choices. But in the 'startup ecosystem' (pardon me) or the 'free market' the cost is privatized and the benefit of success is socialized.
The overall equation looks like this: success = (team1_success or team2_success or ... or teamn_success)
I was assuming that the calculation was from the standpoint of all society, considering most free software advocates consider themselves altruists. So our functions are the same in this case, and it is still possible for the project to not be a good idea based on expected value.
In the general scheme of things, Twitter and Facebook have only just demonstrated that a market exists around their type of product. They'll be replaced at some point, but not by the services in the article.
Niche players might be able establish a de facto standard for shared profile data though.
> What about Twitter's actions that are yet to come?
No telling. That's the point.
> And why not just try?
Because human hours are the most valuable asset on this planet. If you have a .01% chance of success then it's not necessarily worth trying. But that's up to the person who's putting in the time. In this case some people do believe it's worth it and by all means they should try.
I just wonder if there's an option that's more than .01%.
I am not exactly worried about getting downvoted but thanks anyway :-)
I guess I should elaborate on my previous comment: I am saying that there is no reason to look at someone actually trying something big and say "Dude, give up! It won't work!" no matter how rooted in reality you think your choices are.
IMHO it is not helpful or interesting to view the world in binary terms as "lottery players and everyone else". In the risk profile continuum, you're drawing a line at your max risk tolerance level and viewing it as a binary choice. But it is a continuum. Someone else may view everyone not working for the government with pension benefits as a lottery player.
And why not just try? What if the open platform succeeds? Even if the chance of success is 0.01%, it is worth trying. Also, a million such attempts by million such teams can fail. Only one team needs to succeed. Once.