Everyone knows there are no new ideas, yet we never stop hearing criticisms of “unoriginal” designs or products. This site looks like that one, these two logos are too similar, [insert gripe here]. Where, then, is the sweet spot? Where is the canny valley between “inventive” and “uninspired” that makes us comfortable enough to adopt an idea, not mock it?
I’m fascinated by Jaiku. I thought that the web community would surely shun this obvious Twitter knock-off, and that it would spurn yet another hate-fest about how this site is too much like that site. The concept, all of the information design, and every part of the interface is borrowed from Twitter, even the annoying parts (24 pixel, label-less user avatars, anyone?). Despite the liberal peppering of borrowed features, Jaiku seems to have been embraced by the internet community. Is the market for 140 character semi-anonymous witticisms really so massive that it can sustain many identical Twitters?
New market / old market
One theory I’ve heard is that Twitter has indeed defined a new medium (140 character semi-anonymous witticisms), and that the marlet for this medium can sustain many engines. Indeed the email market seems to be able to handle more than a few email solutions and no one is calling Gmail a rip-off of Eudora. Perhaps the “twitter” market is just as broad and just as appealing. Perhaps Jaiku’s tiny improvements to the concept Twitter has only just debuted have made them a superior product.
Google, many have observed, is as adept at redefining existing markets as they are at creating new ones. We all thought Hotmail was fine and Mapquest was adequate (well, most of us), but Google saw room for improvement. Netflix reinvented movie rentals just a few years ago. Now TiVo, Amazon, and quite possibly Apple want to reinvent it again. Idea debuts, people grow complacent, enterprising company improves on it and makes a mint. Perhaps the pattern is just accelerating.
Internationalize or someone else will
Nick Gonzalez wrote an article over at Techcrunch, from which I borrowed the heading above. The article was about Frazr, a French language Twitter clone that had been rapidly gaining popularity. This is my favorite explanation of Jaiku’s success: their wide language support and international community. It seems that, while the US market may or may not crave a slew of Twitters, the international market has room to spare.
As Matt Marshall report[ed], the site is cloned right down to the welcome message: “Everyone wants to know: What are you doing? Tell them. On the Web, in a message, or phone”.
Looks like the moral here is that competition is something the American market not only sustains, but craves. Sure some loudmouthed design-types might complain that your type treatments are too close to the original A List Apart site, but the masses are open to your messages. Just get it heard.