What’s common between the QWERTY Keyboard, Orkut & Windows?
They all zark the theory of natural selection right up its own behind. They are examples of mediocre innovations prevailing and becoming market leaders in the face of better, kickass competition.
It is public knowledge that the QWERTY keyboard is one of the worst designs that one could make for the English Alphabet (The QWERTY layout was designed so that successive keystrokes would alternate between sides of the keyboard so as to avoid jams on the typewriters. Or so says Wikipedia). Even as I am typing this, my fingers are being unnecessarily pressurized and my tendons worn out one keystroke at a time, when there are more scientific, more efficient ways of placing the keys on the board. The most frequently used ‘e’ and ‘a’ and all other letters are not optimized to reduce chances of the eventual carpal tunnel. But still none of us use the better, healthier DVORAK keyset.
Friendster, Hi5 and Facebook. Many more features, easier interfaces, many more user created applications, much more technologically advanced than Orkut. They don’t even screw up often, no ‘bad server, no doughnut’ cow-crap. But still, every teenager and every gen-x leftover worth his cool avatar is flocking has already spent uncountable hours on his Orkut scraps, writing testimonials and checking out profiles of strangers.
And don’t even get me started about Windows. Known in the 90s for its Blue Screen of Death, I must say it has come a long way with NT and XP as an operating system, but yet, it’s nowhere even close to Open source competitors. Redhat, Fedora, Ubuntu, and hajjar other options. No security holes ever, no virus attacks, no SP2 updates, no exposed vulnerabilities, no trojans, no worms, (or atleast, lesser trojans and worms) and best of all, many of them don’t cost a frickin’ penny. But yet, I look at the market share of Windows, and I want to wake Darwin from his grave, whack him on his head, and ask him if he had any clue as to what he was talking about.
The common thread that runs across these examples is: Adoptability. Sometimes it is caused by the lack of options or the first mover advantage (Qwerty). Sometimes it is because of ease of use and simplicity (Windows). Other times it is the peer group and portability (Orkut).
Whatever the reason is, if it makes users adopt an innovation, and stick to it, we have a winner! But how does one use this quirk of markets to one’s advantage? Combine all of them and make them your strategy.
Move first, make it usable, influence the peer group, leave it to the community. And watch any innovation spread like wildfire.
And, if you have an innovation that is actually one of the best in the market, combine these strategies and you can kick anyone’s butt. Including entrenched behemoths. (Firefox vs IE, Wordpress vs Blogspot).
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01 Nov 07 10:20 pm
haha :) interesting point…just 2 counterarguments:
(1) orkut is no market leader (except among brazilian women and indians most of whom are looking for the brazilian women) .. in fact,google is losing money on orkut. google last heard was competing with microsoft to take a stake in facebook.. too little too late coz microsoft of course won that round
(2) microsoft was a victory of intel more than anything else, and of Apple and Sun not being worthy competitors
01 Nov 07 10:22 pm
point i’m trying to make being ‘the market is always right’ :) natural selection through economics!
02 Nov 07 10:57 am
hello J. Thanks for visiting.
Orkut is the market leader in India (as u also pointed out), even with the presence of Facebook (which is snowballing the social networking scene now, but not before). which is also an interesting phenomenon to study.
google is teaming up with myspace, to take on facebook is what i heard last. but the main issue is the peer group forcing adoption of technology instead of technological superiority leading market acceptance in India.
and as far as MS goes, the only reason why BSOD shipped for so long was because it came bundled with the PC. Apple OS was still better, at any given point in time, in security and functionality. Anyhoo. Interesting discussion to have!
21 Feb 08 2:51 am
i agree to J’s point. two things worked for microsoft. gates was teh first to strike up an alliance with intel n ride both the hardware, software market waves together. it was natural selection thru economics as this combo eliminated a lot of complexity from prospective buyers’ life.
for facebook - wat the hell were u on wen u said the interface is more elegant??? riding in the nut freezing cold of delhi w/o winter clothing clearly has had its effect on u!!
21 Feb 08 12:45 pm
The counsel for Darwin most humbly submits :
Theres Yahoo,MSN,etc and then theres gtalk - for all the combined brains of google, it doesnt even have videochat…Why?
This your Lordship,is a hidden argument in favor of Natural selection.The favorable traits of simplicity are being passed on for sure. This is evident by the following :
1. Keyboards
If the counsel is not mistaken, on this very site exists the evidence (http://harishnarayanan.com/2007/10/11/the-any-key-keyboard-drool-worthy/) that substantiates the argument. Men, Your Lordship do make mistakes, but the essence of human society lies in rectifying the same. Natural Selection after is all is not a process wholly devoid of minor glitches…Simplicity, I reiterate is what we are evolving towards in furtherance of natural selection.We dont want to get so confused that we forget to reproduce, do we?
2. Social Networking
Hi5 -messy.
Facebook -I most certainly dont want to know the flirtability factor or for the matter be compared for a match with that guy who used to sit next to me in 2nd standard.
Id rather prefer the
if wanttokeepintouch = ‘yes’ then
scrap = true
else
idontwanttoknowhisflirtabilityquotient = true
end if
Iv started hating Orkut though after they introduced all that updates n ask questions crap. Theyr on their way to being chucked out by my client’s ghost.
3. Windows
As you agreed, boils down to simplicity.
Darwin ain’t that bad a guy! Dont deny a dead man his only claim to fame!! ;)
The counsel rests her case.
:D