Now that I have your attention let us begin theorizing what it means for a company to stay on top once they get on top. In the technology industry companies rise and fall very quickly; some never even rise at all, but all eventually fall; even if it’s not off the mountain.
Let’s take a quick look at MySpace and Facebook. MySpace came first, and they raged as everyone was joining and making their home pages. Then came Facebook, they had a different angle but still the same premise. MySpace has more US users than Facebook, but Facebooks growth is almost 4% per month vs. MySpace, who is at less than 1% per month *. Does this mean that MySpace is dead? No, not at all but the perception is that they are falling. When it comes to social media sites in the main stream media you only seem to hear about Facebook and Twitter. MySpace seems to come up in “To catch a predator” episodes, although not anyones fault. The point is that MySpace came on strong, like morning wood, they grew and stayed up for quite awhile. But, over time morning wood falls and the stamina to stay up is no longer there, thus leaving the door open for another young company with wood; that is were Facebook came in.
Take it a step further and look at companies like: IBM, SUN, Microsoft, Apple, and HP to name a few. Each one of them rose to prominence by taking out the standard in their field. Each one had the strong hard run, but then the extended growth created a flaccid leadership and a limp product development focus. Out of these companies Apple has shown that they can rebound and get up for the second act. They have eliminated what hurt them, and have re-focused on the customer experience; whole heartedly I may add. Microsoft dumped Vista and came out with 7 to show they are thinking of the customer, but that’s like taking viagra. Their new approach doesn’t fix the problem, but just masks it until they build up a tolerance and flatten out again.
I look at industry and I see all these companies come and go, rise and fall, but one thing never seems to change. Like morning wood you can’t keep it going all day long. Sooner or later another company comes around in your space and they woke up a little later than you, and their wood out lasts yours. The trick is not in some silver bullet, the little blue pill, but a dedicated lifestyle change to help bring the wood back stronger than ever. Maybe companies should stop thinking back on what they did when they were young, with morning wood, and concentrate on what they need to do to maintain a healthy lifestyle that provides good wood on demand. After all, no one knows why or what to do with morning wood when they are young and on the rise, they just go with it and that won’t help in the future.
So Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Apple… look out! Some company is about to wake up this morning.
* Statistics gathered from January TechCrunch article