Understanding Technological Advancement

What is the next Facebook Killer? Pete Cashmore writes an interesting article with a pretty good understanding of how technological replacement happens.

Essentially, he argues that technological clones don't overtake something. Diaspora, for example, has sought to be just like Facebook only more private. Yet, it has barely gained any traction for all its efforts. It is too much like Facebook long after Facebook built its base.

Ironically, Cashmore argues Facebook may be the next Google Killer because of the amount of information it has about people in its own databases that Google doesn't necessarily have access to.

The point and reason I focused on this article was simply because I often push the idea that we must build new small businesses. Therefore, I wanted to give people a basic understanding: Business wins because it takes a different angle to do things better.

While Vonage is taking on traditional phone companies by trying to do the same type of thing: create a landline, only cheaper; the major companies went for the cellphones to undermine Vonage by making landlines obsolete.

While power companies are seeking to set up the fight over controlling alternatives to our current energies, they haven't embraced solar or wind power for a simple reason: to embrace it is to give up control over power because you could (and should) be building them on your roofs without them. They want a power source that is more efficient than oil/gas/coal and allows them to control it.

While e-mail certainly hurt mail, what is killing mail is not email but rather Facebook, Text Messages, and more that make the "letter" obsolete. We can now communicate so freely and easily that one has to wonder who writes letters anymore?

Then again, how much more significant is an actual hand written letter when you receive it, than say... a text or a poke?