> And how hard is it to clone del.icio.us?
Both not-hard and hard. Several people have cloned the functionality, but
it's hard to clone positive returns to scale.
Right. Understood.
> I would've thought it would've made sense for these folks to roll their own
> - hoping to leave del.icio.us in the dust - but ...
> shows how much I know, I guess.
Why re-invent when you can integrate?
In a word, $$$$. "When the reinventing's cheap, and the partnership's going to cost you something, why partner?..." (You answer this below, of course.)
The del.icio.us codebase is an empty
vessel -- the value comes from us. Starting from scratch means starting with
zero value. Starting with del integration is free,
Not exactly. It's just a question of control, but I think that control's worth something. I know Joshua's investors think it's worth something -- a lot, it seemed to me.
and means less
distraction from browser-writing, including the fact that del's server-based
model requires a different set of skills than writing and shipping a
browser.
Fair enough, but it seems like del is so simple really that you could replicate it fairly readily.
I share your skepticism about Flock's target of 100M users -- that is an
absurd number -- but starting with an empty clone of del would leave them
with *fewer* initial target users and *more* work to do, a distinctly bad
set of options relative to the alternative.
Yeah, I think this is the real argument to partner: It's a marketing thing. It's a way of attracting end users. They know they don't want to start from scratch so they leverage off of existing user bases - not only del, but Flickr, and presumably others as well.
It seems a little conservative, but ... they have bitten off a lot, so ... who can begrudge them *one* conservative decision, smile....
Tks for your reply, Clay,
Matthew
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