It makes sense, but I don't really know if I agree with all of it. Rather, I don't necessarily disagree, because what company wouldn't want everybody on the planet as a customer -- but I think most companies (at least early on) prefer to have a niche, and dominate within that niche.
The less precise your niche is, or the larger your demographic, the harder it is to precisely deliver anything to them. You can't possibly be all things to all people, and once you've expanded beyond a demographic that you can effectively meet the needs of, then you stop being 'kick ass' for any one person, and start being 'okay' for more people.
For services like Facebook, I think this is the death knell of their offering. What they still have, of course, is the zillions of users. So long as they have everybody, it buys them time.
What I was trying to allude to earlier though, is that if the early adopters that got them popular start going elsewhere, then eventually, so will everybody want to be.
The catch though, is that just like nobody is taking on Craigslist head-on, I don't think anybody can take on Facebook head-on. But, just as Twitter is a viable alternative for status updates, if other, really awesome little things start cropping up for other aspects of FB service, they'll eventually start to erode FB's offerings.
The best thing that FB has going for it in defense of that is their platform, which means that likely, much of what might otherwise usurp FaceBook may well end up just integrating with them instead.
The less precise your niche is, or the larger your demographic, the harder it is to precisely deliver anything to them. You can't possibly be all things to all people, and once you've expanded beyond a demographic that you can effectively meet the needs of, then you stop being 'kick ass' for any one person, and start being 'okay' for more people.
For services like Facebook, I think this is the death knell of their offering. What they still have, of course, is the zillions of users. So long as they have everybody, it buys them time.
What I was trying to allude to earlier though, is that if the early adopters that got them popular start going elsewhere, then eventually, so will everybody want to be.
The catch though, is that just like nobody is taking on Craigslist head-on, I don't think anybody can take on Facebook head-on. But, just as Twitter is a viable alternative for status updates, if other, really awesome little things start cropping up for other aspects of FB service, they'll eventually start to erode FB's offerings.
The best thing that FB has going for it in defense of that is their platform, which means that likely, much of what might otherwise usurp FaceBook may well end up just integrating with them instead.