[Sigia-l] First to market vs. Right to market

[Trenouth, John]

I remember posting a question here some months ago about whether its
better to be first to market, or getting the right product to market.  

Ari Paparo who back in 1999 started a social web-based bookmarking tool
(like del.icio.us) called blink.com, blogs about the failure of getting
to market first but not right.

http://www.aripaparo.com/archive/001456.html

"We had more money, more users, a five year head start, and some really,
really smart people working on bookmarking in 1999. The bottom line is
that we simply didn't get it right."

The point of the article isn't in any particular tactical failing
(folders suck, folksonomies rule, they had too much money, etc...).
This point is that they just plain didn't get it right.

This also relates to my previous question of research vs. just-do-it.
Blink just did it.  And that first stake they put in the ground framed
the design problem/solution in such a way as to calcify the company's
thinking preventing it from recognizing simple ideas that would later
help del.icio.us get bought by Yahoo.  

I suspect prudent fuzzy-front-end design research would have helped
avoid such myopia (my damn bias rears its ugly head again). Perhaps
that's what Paparo meant when he said "I believe [our failure] all came
down to product design."

Merry Christmas everyone.

-- john