Expanding on ideas

[Scott-CopyandDesign]

We all know websites like Myspace etc are very successful, popular and powerful.

My question is, do you think it's possible for a website similar to an already successful service to introduce itself to the market and become successful by making some minor or significant changes?

[telemax]

Hi

I think it's definitely possible, most successful ideas are only a small variation on the original but modified to fit into a niche.

For example there are hundreds of car rental web sites around but say you made a website specialising only in Hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius and marketed it as an eco friendly way of hiring a car, you would have completely different idea with a fantastic new marketing spin only a little different from a normal car rental company.

I hope that makes sense and helps

Kind regards

Jonathan

[Scott-CopyandDesign]

Thankyou.

It's just I have a new idea which is a moderate twist on Myspace. Considering if it's worth looking into it more.

[Babylon]

It doesn't need to be a niche and one can take on an established player and win.

To quote the Harvard Prof. Porter, an industry is shaped by the following 5 forces:

1. The relative bargaining power of customers
2. The relative bargaining power of suppliers
3. Internal rivalry within the industry
4. The barriers to entry / Government regulations
5. Availability of substitute products

There is empirical evidence to suggest that sometimes it is advantages to be the second entrant into a market. The prime example of this is Microsoft. Even though they were following Apple into the pc operating software market, they managed to beat Apple with an inferior product. They did it mainly because of their strategic partnership with IBM, which gave them the access to distribute their product. I hope there is no need to mention here that Microsoft's founder Bill Gates is the richest man in the world for some time.

Best wishes,

[Coding Monkey]

Joel, Apple actually turned down the deal with IBM, which was described as the worst business mistake of the 20th century, so it was more of a case of entering 1st, as there wasn't actually a competitor, as such.

I would say that based on the success of Bebo and Facebook, it certainly seems there is room for competition, and the incredible rise in popularity of YouTube is astonishing, all because of user content. The problem you'll have is giving people enough reason to join, and making them return. A friend and I setup a rival to Diaryland about 5 years ago, which, at the time, was the main blogging website. We offered more features, better support, easier use, extended functions of Diaryland and made it completely compatible with their templates, so you could just port them over and they'd work straight away. We even made all of the Diaryland paid-for features free. However, the main problem was that people were loyal to Diaryland. Not because of their features, but because of their community and their input into Diaryland. Because of this, we wrote a script that would download every single entry they'd ever done, back-it-up, and put it into our database. So, within 1 minute, everything that held them committed to a website was now moved over to ours. It was the most successful feature on the entire site, because it removed the biggest fear they had in joining and investing into it from the beginning.

[Scott-CopyandDesign]

Thanks for the responses people. I think I'm going to look into the idea more.