In today’s update on TechCrunch they discuss an article in the latest Business 2.0 magazine about the many companies who are in effect cloning the largest social networks.  While TechCrunch has debunked the validity of some of the sites many of Business 2.0’s examples are correct.

Have a look at the graphic below and see how many you recognize.

I’m confident that most of these won’t grow to anything significant.

Time will tell.

Thanks for reading
Adam.

It is not exactly a profound statement to say business is moving faster than ever before.  In the past revolutions took decades.  Even in the 90’s revolutions like the internet or the mobile phone took 6+ years to hit the mainstream.  Today it is a completely different matter.

Businesses that were just ideas 2 years ago are now outgrowing competitors many years their senior.  Longevity no longer matters.  Just take a look at the Presidential debates and the fact that the main medium the public is using to connect with politicians (namely YouTube) didn’t even exist at the last election.

No longer is business about finding a need and filling it.  Today it is more like anticipate a future need, develop your product, wait a couple years for the market to realize this need and then fill it. 

The interesting thing is that so many of us fail to understand this.  I see businesses everyday throwing literally millions down the drain because all they do is follow the leader.  A new market opportunity opens up, an innovator recognises this, they’re in first and so when the shift towards their product takes place they are ready to seize the moment.  The innovator makes a bundle of money and so everybody else decides they want the same.  Sorry folks but the horse has bolted.

The thing these businesses fail to relize is, the need no longer exists (well not in the same form anyway).  So the sheep lose their money and wait for the next big thing.

Herein lies the problem.  By the time the next big thing is the next big thing it is too late!

Here in Australia there has been a lot of competition entering the market trying to catch the big job boards.  From my point of view this is simply a waste of time.  These leading job boards are backed by huge media empires and are too well entrenched to ever be knocked off their perch.  They have too much money, too many media outlets to feed off and already have the customers.  Monster and Careerbuilder are in similar situations in the US.  No job boards will ever catch them.  For these companies to lose their market share there has to be a change in the game.

The good news is change is automatic.

The good news is change is automatic.  As a competitor we have to remember this and take a step back, see the reality of the situation and understand what is and isn’t happening in the market currently.  Then take this view and compare it with what we think will be in the future.  Somewhere in between is a good starting point.  The market will shift and whoever gets there first will have a big headstart.

So how do we tell whether we are on the right track to being an innovator?  Well I have to be honest and say this I do not know for sure.  I can tell you one thing though and that is “If everybody likes your idea, then it’s not the right idea.”

Thanks for reading
Adam

We’ve been looking at a few ways lately to market ourselves to the online community outside of SEO and Pay Per Click.  While SEO is a must and will forever be in our marketing plan Pay Per Click is something we are wanting to phase out or at least reduce our monthly spend.  Some of the marketing options we are currently undertaking include involvement in social network sites like MySpace and YouTube as well as aggregator sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. 

Without giving too much away these are avenues that we feel are under utilized.  When you take into account that websites like Wazza.com are all about connections (between job seekers and employers) we would be silly not to put a plan into action to encourage use through these sites.

I find it very interesting that in the United States, presidential candidates like Barack Obama, Fred Thompson, Hilary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and more are all using social media sites (just search MySpace and you’ll find they all have pages) to present themselves and their ideals to the American people.  Considering the tens of millions of dollars they each have raised they could easily bypass these mediums and head straight for the mainstream.  This tells me that social networks are fast becoming mainstream.

As with anything the early adopters are often who gain the most. 

Stay in touch with our blog and we’ll keep you posted on how things go and maybe even fill you in on some of the details.

Thanks
Adam

For all you out there interested in taking charge of your life be sure to check out Craig Harper’s blog.  His post today on ‘Why I hate the Concept of Destiny’ is excellent.

Click here to view Motivational Speaker Craig Harper’s blog.

Thanks
Adam.

I am a big believer that innovation can’t be bought.  It’s the manifestation of imagination and imagination is the seed of creativity.  It is something that is brought forth from people when they are following their passion.  The Google guys had a passion for the storage and organisation of information. They weren’t trying to get rich, catch up to a competitor or please the guys upstairs. They were simply following their passion to enable us access to all the internets information as quickly as possible. That’s why they were innovators. They were using their imagination to create an information retrieval tool that would change the world. As we know they did a brilliant job of it.

I think Microsoft and their struggles with there Live Search system is a good example that innovation can’t be bought.  Microsoft have all the money in the world and have tried for years to close the gap (more like a canyon really) between themselves and Google in terms of search.  The problem is Microsoft just seem to lack the imagination of those that went before them.

That’s why I have always believed that if anyone ever came to challenge Google’s search supremcy it would not be from either Microsoft or Yahoo.  It would be from someone with the innovation to change the way search works.  Google did it with their famous algorithm and Adwords down the right hand side.  Maybe (and this is still a big maybe) ASK 3D might be the innovation the search industry (outside of Google) has lacked.  What Firefox did with the browser ASK 3D is beginning to do with search. 

While the simplicity of their search page is a little Googlesque, its the results page where the advancements can be seen.  This is where the 3D part of the search results comes in.  The search results page is split into 3 columns.  If you do a search for say Michael Jordan (click the link left and see for yourself) not only do you receive the search results to this query but to the left and the right of the search results ASK has added a column that features additional enhancements.  These additonal features are Narrow Search, Expand Search, Related Names to search, Image results, Wikipedia results, Video results and even the latest news results (similar to what Google offers at the top of there search results page).

You can all make up your own mind and time will tell how well these additional features fare but for my thinking ASK have defintely made a big step in the right direction.  There innovative search defintely has created a bit of a stir with rumours that Google themselves are testing a similar system.

While unlike Microsoft with IE6 Google has always been working on there search system sometimes what is needed for real prgression is fresh eyes and a little imagination.  As stated Firefox gave life to the web browser and hopefully ASK 3D will do it for search.  My only hope is that if Google do release a similar system that ASK still get the recognition and users it deserves.  This though is another matter entirely.

Thanks
Adam.