Strategic question for Facebook developers
During lunch today, an interesting question came up amongst a bunch of Facebook developers:
How do you avoid becoming a 3rd-tier Slide.com?
It seems like beyond the first couple players – Slide, RockYou, and others, there’s a huge drop-off for small teams who have raised <$1MM and trying to compete. Problem is, when you look at a company like Slide, they have 10-25X the number of people, 100X the funding, 100X the valuation, and 1000X+ the reach.
I’d be curious to hear how people are thinking about this?
My main thinking about this would be to pick some type of vertical – either by industry, demographic, media type, or something else that raises the bar for defensibility. It makes it much harder to be a "fast-follower." Anyone who is working on a purely horizontal communication basis will run straight into the Slide/Rockyou wall.
Any other ideas here?