Thursday 5 August 2010

The demise of Google's Wave is a stark reminder of just how hard it can be to launch a new technology idea:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/04/google_wave_dead/

A key take home lesson for me is to try to make the success of SP less dependent on the network effect. Hopefully SP can be more like the mobile phone rather than the original telephone (mobility is useful for one user even if everyone you talk to has a land line).

2 comments:

  1. This is pretty insightful http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2010/08/05/GoogleWaveAndNetworkEffects.aspx re: network effects

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  2. Yeah, there are some useful ideas there about the relation between invite-only and the network effect.

    However, I was more struck by the quote of Joel Spolsky's about what he called the Marimba Phenomenon:


    PR grows faster than the quality of your code. Result: everybody checks out your code, and it's not good yet. These people will be permanently convinced that your code is simple and inadequate, even if you improve it drastically later. I call this the Marimba phenomenon


    This is exactly my fear about any kind of 'release' of the SP Agent I'm developing. So, although I know I need to move out of 'stealth' mode I'm going to take the process very gently.

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