Conquering Kings / 05.16.08
When you are working on a product or site with an entrenched industry leader how do you think about overtaking them? Do you list all the features they offer vs. what you offer side-by-side to see who comes out on top? Apple doesn’t do that because most of their products are less feature rich than the competition yet they lead in so many categories.
Social Media
Looking at Social Media sites the big players include:
I am reluctant to include Yahoo Buzz because they factor in other things that effect their rankings. Either way you have at least 3 big players with one of them completely dominating everyone else (Digg). If you were to go against them how would you do it? You could breakdown how each one of them approaches social media to see if you can find an advantage. If we assume Digg is the baseline of a social media site then we can see how the others differentiate themselves.
They differ on how their algorithm works. Instead of getting a time-based listing of popular items you get a listing of what is hot for that moment you visit the site. Each pageload can bring a different look to the page. They also allow you to create your own reddits for people to participate meaning that there can be an infinite number of categories across the site.
This is usually the first place an old school Digg person ends up if they want to get back to the tech feel of things, but it’s becoming more and more apparent that Digg and Reddit are one in the same with regards to what becomes popular on the site. The rules seems to be that mainstream interests take over any site where mainstream interests are allowed. It can’t be fought.
Propeller
In all honesty the only thing I see this site has going for it is the fact that it is linked to AOL and Netscape and if it wasn’t for those it wouldn’t be anywhere. It differentiates itself from Digg by having a broader range of topics you can post to that shows how they try to cater more to the mainstream than even Digg is trying to. They also have specialized Propeller people who can boost a story if they feel the need.
Mixx
The kid on the playground has gained a lot of ground due to the people behind it and the hype that it received. Looking at the site you can see that it to caters to whatever people are willing to link to without a general focus on anything in particular. It adds a couple features with its stories that Digg doesn’t have, but these features aren’t enough to separate it from the crowd.
Commonality
If you listen to what an active member says that they like about any one of these sites they all seem to focus on the community. They love the community they are a part of unless it begins to change then they find another site to move to. However, if you noticed a trend above you can see that each community is going to turn into the same thing over and over again since there is nothing differentiating it from the rest. Each one allows more and more mainstream content onto their sites bringing in the same crowd that chases out the original users.
So if you take a look at the Social Media field you can see that the two most important “features” that a site can provide is content that a person wants to read and a great community. Understand those before entering the field and you might have a chance if you are able to avoid what sets the rest of the competition back. The key is you won’t beat Digg or any of the others if you take the same approach as they do. There really isn’t that much differentiation between them so another site in this field that does what they do with one more added feature won’t stand a chance.
I do think the solution is a lot simpler than you might think. Find the one aspect of the king that you want to take away and attack it.
Web 2.0 Blogs
For web 2.0 blogs I am going to use TechCrunch (baseline), ReadWriteWeb, Silicon Alley Insider, Mashable and CenterNetwork as examples.
There is an example that I wish to bring up before I dive into these sites because I feel it will help give you a good frame of mind. Consider Yahoo and Google back in the days. If you wanted to take over Yahoo and become the #1 destination on the web it almost makes sense to do everything that they do, but how far would that get you? Instead why not look at one aspect of what they do that users appreciate and do it better. In the case of Google they chose search and the rest is history.
TechCrunch is Yahoo in this sector. They have grown so large that they seem to wish to cover everything in the web world. If you pay close attention to the comments you can always find someone wishing for the old days when they just covered startups. That should be an alert right there for anyone wishing to grab a part of TC’s market. A similar alert can be found in the Digg situation if you pay close attention. Now let’s see what TC’s competitors do to try and differentiate themselves from the field.
ReadWriteWeb
I’ve know Richard MacManus for a long time before he made it big. I knew his site when there was good content that was posted with little frequency. Now you have great content posted regularly and the differentiating factor here is the analysis put into each article. It’s almost always original, thoughtful content that you might get once in a blue moon on TC. Of course this kind of content serves a small audience than the TC crowd because it goes away from the mainstream, but the point is to take a chunk of the market and they have done so. In the future if they wish to expand they now have the resources and audience to do so, a great position to be in.
Silicon Alley Insider
Very similar to RW/W in that they provide some good analysis on companies and take a deeper look into the business aspects of the web 2.0 world. Again this is more of a niche site for the market, but they have done well by differentiating themselves and grabbing a chunk.
Mashable and CenterNetworks
I combine these two because they are similar in their approach. They attempt to take on TC by following the TC model: quick hits. The key here is to get news before anyone else and if you know the publishing game this is a ruthless one to follow because if you aren’t first than you aren’t important. The thing is you can’t out TC, TC, so why bother? It makes no sense and although each of them have done well from themselves from what I can gather if their goal is to topple the baseline I don’t see them doing with their current approach.
Mashable had the fortune of being started a couple years ago before TC was big so that is why Cashmore’s numbers are higher than people would expect.
Gaming Blogs
In this segment the comparison is simple: Kotaku and Joystiq. Both very similar, if you catch a story on one you are bound to catch the same story on another so how do you being to differentiate yourself? You could write more indepth articles, but if your authors are paid by how many entries they put out the chances of this are slim. There is a bit more original content on Kotaku, while Joystiq posts more frequently. Still that doesn’t take one over the top.
Instead, Joystiq decide to go more niche, but didn’t do so on their own site because when you have a site that tackels every aspect of a market you can’t make it into a niche site. Joystiq now comes with its own network.
So now Kotaku not only has to compete against Joystiq, but 7 other sites that have no problem attacking their niche with the same passion that Joystiq does. This approach works because gaming is such a huge market. For a smaller market you wouldn’t want to break it up like this, but who doesn’t think TechCrunch would be a better site if they split up into segments (Start-Ups, Old Media, etc)?
Looking at the Kotaku vs Joystiq battle you can see that it would be hard to outdo Kotaku at what they do and Joystiq keeps up with them and vice versa. However to go over the top what is the weakness of each site? They can’t focus on a specific segment of the gaming market and that is why these subsites do so well. You think all the WoW fans would continue to visit Joystiq to try and filter through all the noise just to get to the news they want? Doubtful.
Another approach would be to write more indepth gaming articles and let your site be known for that. A great example of this is Destructoid. Because of their approach though they will never be ahead of Joystiq or Kotaku, but like RW/W they are building up a great audience for expansion if they wish to do so down the road.
King is Dead, Long Live the King
I hope I have explained my thoughts well enough for you to walk away with the understanding that to take on an industry leader you don’t need to tackle every aspect of what they do. Find something that they do that people like and you think you can do better. If there is a market for it and you do better than the King there is a great chance you will succeed. So often in the web world sites grow to a certain size where they start to take on more than they can handle and they stop specializing and simply try to be the king of everything. Large corporations are no different.
Although Linux has no where near the marketshare of Windows on the desktop they were able to make a dent in the market by doing various tasks better than Windows. I think they tripped up when they tried to be a better Windows than Windows, but save that for another site to discuss. I can’t think of a good example where a king was toppled because the upstart had more features.
The iPhone and iPod have less features than their competition yet they are on top. Google has less to offer via search (well maybe not now) and they made it to the top. If you get caught up on trying to match the competition feature for feature you won’t get very far. Find something you can do well and maximize it to the best of your ability.