NYCPHP Meetup

[Paul A Houle]

Fernando Gabrieli wrote:
> its probably a new topic, why a site is successful where others dont 
> event get 1 comment posted...why craiglist was successful?
>
    That's a big question.

    Many successful sites have bodies buried somewhere.  Up until 2002 
or so,  it was possible to launch new community sites with e-mail spam 
campaigns.  If you tried to do that today you'd have servers,  ip 
addresses,  really anything associated with the operation burned pretty 
quick.  (Not like I'd know or anything...)

    Community sites tend to be two-sided makets:  for instance,  people 
posting personal ads and people reading personal ads.  It's very hard to 
dislodge an established competitor in this kind of market.  Amazon,  
Yahoo and other sites with big user lists tried adding auctions after 
Ebay was successful,  but it was always a flop -- why try to buy 
something in a place where nobody is selling?  why try to sell something 
in a place where nobody is buying?

    In early phases,  2-sided markets grow according to a differential 
equation where dx/dt is proportional to x^2.  This equation gives you 
slower-than-exponential growth in  the early phases (site that never 
gets established) and crosses over to super-exponential growth before 
hitting a singularity and going infinite at a finite time.  Of course,  
limiting terms make the singularity go away in real life.

    It helps,  therefore,  to be the first person in a market with a 
"good enough" product...  There are some cases where products that 
aren't "good enough" fail until something successful comes along:  for 
instance,  a number of del.icio.us-type sites were created in the 
1990's,  and they just didn't go anywhere.  del.icio.us got the user 
interface right for putting content in,  and nobody ever seemed to 
notice that the interface for getting content out is entirely deficient.

    Some sites connect with a community and some don't.  There are some 
subjects that people are interested in talking about and others that 
they aren't -- sometimes the people that talk don't know and the people 
that know don't talk.