Those are the 3 steps to launching a successful web2.0 app or website. Step 1, take an already existing idea. Step 2, Add new features. Step 3, do everything else better.
Mafia Wars/Mob Wars/Mobsters are now in copyright/Intellectual Property lawsuits against each other.
What this brings to light is each company trying to dissolve the other so they can be the one “big” mob style game. With 3 games with almost the same feature set and goals, they need to have a constant struggle to be the one users prefer. In the world of the Internet, If you do it better, you win. Take the big rise of search engines: Google did it the best, they dominated. Take webmail: Gmail came out, it did everything that hotmail and yahoo did, but it added new features, and did everything else better. Facebook, same story. It made myspace’s clutter look neat and tidy, and it continues to innovate and add new features, while Myspace now sags behind. The trick of the game is to keep making improvements. Bigger, better, faster. (stronger) Innovation can go wrong as well, for example, FunWall/SuperWall -> Improve on facebook’s own wall. (Both of these apps have basically failed to exist in their original form anymore after the new profile update)
If you know of a way to make something better, you have an idea waiting to be profited from. Because lets face it, almost anything that will ever become a facebook app, or website for that matter, has “been done” -> All that needs to happen now is the continual improvement process. It is challenge, the need to compete, the drive to be the best, that will cause innovation in the world. Keep giving the masses what they want: just do it better than you did the day before. Much as a department store gauges customer satisfaction, web developers writing scripts or apps should have a metric to judge how well they satisfy the need of the users.
Competition is always a good thing. It keeps us moving forward. If there was only one forum system forever, we would all be stuck with that and whatever was invented for it. Thankfully, we have phpBB, IPB, vBulliten, and a host of others. With IPB and vB neck and neck competing with each other, they both continually improve on design and feature set. Facebook / Myspace also sees this, and that is where it shows that Myspace is lacking in the site management department. They saw how Facebook launched Apps, they saw all the problems Facebook had, and when they launched their platform it STILL did not do as well as FB.
Clone something (website or idea) out there. Innovate new features. Dominate the competition.
Authors Note: Yes, I wrote this at 2AM. Silly me. Follow me on twitter @Collin1000 for more random ramblings.
