Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
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Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
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Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
#2" If you want to chat with people, you have to go where they are, and ICQ and AOL have the most people by far. Chances are, your friends are using one of those services, not one of the smaller ones like MSN Instant Messenger. With all of Microsoft's muscle, money, and marketing skill, they are just not going to be able to break into auctions or instant messaging, because the network effects there are so strong. "
Funny to read that in hindsight...
Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
#3" If you want to chat with people, you have to go where they are, and ICQ and AOL have the most people by far. Chances are, your friends are using one of those services, not one of the smaller ones like MSN Instant Messenger. With all of Microsoft's muscle, money, and marketing skill, they are just not going to be able to break into auctions or instant messaging, because the network effects there are so strong. " Fun…
Care to elaborate? I still use ICQ and various xmpp accounts, plus skype. Had an MSN account a while back, but only for two friends who ended up switching away from it.
Yes, Microsoft bought skype, but that's not really "breaking into", that's "buying". You wouldn't say that Microsoft "broke into the FPS market by making Halo".
Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
#4Fantastic article. This is why I don't mind reposts - every once in a while, there's a real gem that I've missed.
Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
#5The most important thing to understand about these models is that it's very easy to get big fast but very much harder (especially with software) to get good fast.
Good almost always takes several iterations. If your market is filled with high quality offerings by competitors then getting big fast could be a recipe for burning a lot of capital before your product becomes good enough to compete, or simply burning enough capital to go out of business before it has matured.
Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
#6" If you want to chat with people, you have to go where they are, and ICQ and AOL have the most people by far. Chances are, your friends are using one of those services, not one of the smaller ones like MSN Instant Messenger. With all of Microsoft's muscle, money, and marketing skill, they are just not going to be able to break into auctions or instant messaging, because the network effects there are so strong. " Fun…
Care to elaborate? I still use ICQ and various xmpp accounts, plus skype. Had an MSN account a while back, but only for two friends who ended up switching away from it. Yes, Microsoft bought skype, but that's not really "breaking into", that's "buying". You wouldn't say that Microsoft "broke into the FPS market by making Halo".
Everyone I see frequently who still uses IM (and not just Facebook) uses MSN, so I guess it's a location thing. I'm in Ireland. (And AOL is out for people that want to talk to non-Americans, probably, as I had to jump through hoops to get a AIM to talk to American friends) .
Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
#7" If you want to chat with people, you have to go where they are, and ICQ and AOL have the most people by far. Chances are, your friends are using one of those services, not one of the smaller ones like MSN Instant Messenger. With all of Microsoft's muscle, money, and marketing skill, they are just not going to be able to break into auctions or instant messaging, because the network effects there are so strong. " Fun…
Care to elaborate? I still use ICQ and various xmpp accounts, plus skype. Had an MSN account a while back, but only for two friends who ended up switching away from it. Yes, Microsoft bought skype, but that's not really "breaking into", that's "buying". You wouldn't say that Microsoft "broke into the FPS market by making Halo".
All of my friends switched from ICQ to MSN. The switch happened kind of fast too. Especially during the XP and hotmail era. XP comes with windows messenger pre-installed. Not to mentioned the whole Windows Live ID thingie.
Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
#8" If you want to chat with people, you have to go where they are, and ICQ and AOL have the most people by far. Chances are, your friends are using one of those services, not one of the smaller ones like MSN Instant Messenger. With all of Microsoft's muscle, money, and marketing skill, they are just not going to be able to break into auctions or instant messaging, because the network effects there are so strong. " Fun…
Care to elaborate? I still use ICQ and various xmpp accounts, plus skype. Had an MSN account a while back, but only for two friends who ended up switching away from it. Yes, Microsoft bought skype, but that's not really "breaking into", that's "buying". You wouldn't say that Microsoft "broke into the FPS market by making Halo".
It's very location specific. In the Netherlands almost everyone uses Windows Live Messenger, while in Germany (or so I heard) ICQ is still much more common.
Though these days I like to think Facebook is taking over because it kind of consolidates e-mail and IM.
Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Care to elaborate? I still use ICQ and various xmpp accounts, plus skype. Had an MSN account a while back, but only for two friends who ended up switching away from it. Yes, Microsoft bought skype, but that's not really "breaking into", that's "buying". You wouldn't say that Microsoft "broke into the FPS market by making Halo".
Everyone I see frequently who still uses IM (and not just Facebook) uses MSN, so I guess it's a location thing. I'm in Ireland. (And AOL is out for people that want to talk to non-Americans, probably, as I had to jump through hoops to get a AIM to talk to American friends) .
Interesting. I really think it is a huge location thing. Making it somewhat extra-restricted to non-virtual social networking constraints.
Re: Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
#10Fantastic article. This is why I don't mind reposts - every once in a while, there's a real gem that I've missed.
In that case, just read through every single article in Joel's archive.
A real shame he's not making any more of them, too.