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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

> Or because they really don't see any new value.

Value is a misnomer. There's no inherent value in 90% of the stuff that blows up. What's the "value" in Facebook? It's even hard to see today, think about how hard it was to see in 2006.

"Value" is the same nonsense idea as "solving a problem" that startup wantapreneurs are so obsessed with -- what problem did Snapchat really solve? What problem did FB solve that Myspace didn't? What problem did Google solve that Yahoo didn't?

Sometimes it's just about being different (Pinterest), being controversial (Snapchat), being novel (AirBnB), and having fun (reddit). Sometimes it's about cleaning up UX (Facebook), or making things just a bit easier to find (Google). But above all, it's about the right place, right time, and right execution. Fortune favors the bold.

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It seems like you're going out of your way to avoid describing the value these products provided. Especially in your characterization of Google.

Pinterest provides entertainment, product discovery, and community.

Snapchat enabled a new type of communication by removing self consciousness.

Airbnb provides quality lodging at low prices.

Facebook provided authenticity, exclusivity, and increased information density through timeline.

Google provided far better search results.

> Pinterest provides entertainment, product discovery, and community.

This is kind of a non-statement. You could say that just about any internet based social network startup provides "community" and "entertainment" -- and yet many completely fail. This is quintessential grasping at straws and a posteriori reasoning.

> Snapchat enabled a new type of communication by removing self consciousness.

So did Yik Yak, so does IRC, so do anonymous forums, so does Kik. Again, this is kind of a ultra-general non-value value proposition. Why Snapchat got funded has nothing to do with the idea -- and everything to do with traction.

> Airbnb provides quality lodging at low prices.

So does hotels.com or (if you haggle a little) Craigslist.

> Facebook provided authenticity, exclusivity, and increased information density through timeline.

The timeline wasn't around when FB launched (back then we had the wall). I'm not even sure what "information density" means (or if it's even a good thing), it seems like 20-20 rear-view justification for FB's success. MySpace probably provided more authenticity, anyway (I could customize my page way more).

Just to hone in on one example, do you really not see any benefit to using Airbnb over Craigslist for short term rentals? Even in the beginning? I can argue the other side, I think quite clearly, but I first want to make sure that's actually what you're claiming because it seems so demonstrably untrue.

Maybe more specifically, the value of all these networks lies in the network part. The tricky part is convincing the people that will use it to become part of the product.

> So does hotels.com or (if you haggle a little) Craigslist.

hotels.com doesn't work as well as airbnb for rural areas and even in cities, you don't get to see anything about how flats are set up in the local area. The idea of trying to book accommodation for an anniversary weekend seems utterly mad. How do you comb through results? How do you pay? How do you view the reputation of the place? How do you know there aren't going to be animal bones all over the walls?

Yes, you can ask all those things and go back-and-forth. Yes, you can set up a separate paypal payment, but all of that is time spent and additional worries.

Solving a problem and providing a new, better way of doing something are really two different sides of the same coin. Put differently, you don't have to solve an explicit problem. You can also solve a latent problem.

Who are you to judge "wantapreneurs"? Of course, there is something such as "value"!

> Solving a problem and providing a new, better way of doing something are really two different sides of the same coin.

I'm going to contend that they are two fundamentally different things. Inventing the internal combustion engine and working at Honda on their 2019 model are two very different things.

This seems like a strawman. No one is arguing that the 20th iteration of a major auto model is providing a new way of doing things.

I am admittedly stretching the argument thin, but I still hope you see my point.

I don't. What's the difference between solving a problem and finding a better way of doing things?

Whenever you can make a point by stretching an analogy to an extreme, I think it's possible to imagine stretching the analogy the other direction. In this case, the distinction seems to be a matter of degrees, rather than a fundamental difference.

I'm not really sure what your point was. But you seem to think that doing something better is not solving a problem. Sure it is, just a slightly doesn't problem. Your car analogy... The original problem was a carriage needed house to be pulled, the solution was the combustible engine. The next problem was the engine want fast enough. Then the engine used too much gas. Then the problem was it cost too much. Perhaps working on the 20th iteration of the engine isn't as hard as inventing the engine in the first place, but there are still problems to be solved, and value to be added. Sure, the winner isn't always better, sometimes they just have better marketers. But most of your original examples the succeeder did something better. Yahoo want a search engine and it was noisy. Google was simple and it find stuff. MySpace had a spam problem. Sometimes the new thing is just easier to use, or looks nicer, or it does one small thing the other doesn't.

The original comment could then still hold, though. Yes, it might be like Slack/IRC/whatever, but better.

The way I remember it, Facebook removed customisation, giving users one good page design. In Myspace people had to think about what tiled wallpaper and brutally large sound file to include in their page. Seconding everything shafyy said.

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