Is Facebook really so bad that it can only be "imitated"?

Absrtact: Unsurprisingly, Instagram launched a short video feature. A mobile social platform with hundreds of millions of active users, based on a picture platform that has already achieved great success, has launched a product with excellent functionality, and it is not surprising that users are generally welcome.

Unsurprisingly, Instagram launched a short video feature. A mobile social platform with hundreds of millions of active users, based on a picture platform that has already achieved great success, has launched a product with excellent functionality, and it is not surprising that users are generally welcome.

Unexpectedly, these days to see some of the domestic and foreign science and Technology blog on Facebook "frequently imitated controversy," the accusation, stand just ling, view high-end Leng Yan. The general point is that Facebook imitates other companies ' products, loses confidence and innovation, and is already on the defensive in its product strategy. Some tech blogs, which have been on the cutting edge of technology, have shown deep disappointment that Facebook has "failed to lead a new trend", even comparing Facebook with the Chinese internet giant Tencent, using the word "plagiarism" directly.

So, as the world's largest social networking site, is Facebook really so bad that it can only be "imitated"?

Take a specific look at Facebook's main case of copycat controversy: the introduction of a "Snapchat" social application like the Poke,instagram, which introduces similar Vine short video features and adds a similar check-in function like Foursquare, Increase the topic tag on Twitter and so on.

Indeed, these features and patterns are not created by Facebook, but are ported and added to their products after the success of other sites or applications. But is there a moral disadvantage in the transplant and the addition, that is, the performance of lack of innovation? I'm afraid I can't easily conclude.

For short video, Twitter bought a short video application Vine last year, which was released early this year. But the short video this mode is definitely not vine innovation, last year to Viddy, Socialcam as a representative of a group of short video applications Once red fire, users have broken through the tens. If it were not for imitation, I'm afraid Twitter's vine could not escape the blame.

Of course, vine not completely copy other products, but in short video to do subtraction, shorten the short video time to 6 seconds, but also cancels various late functions, in a pure content form as a social carrier. Because Vine has the support of Twitter, so the outside attention, in 5 months users break through tens of thousands of gates.

Compared with Vine, Instagram's short video has more unique features. Not only has the Instagram the marking filter, but also may the segmentation photograph Delete, has the image stable function. In any case, Instagram in the short video to imitate Vine's argument is no reason, Instagram short video function than Vine to be more exciting innovation. In fact, after Instagram introduced this function, vine traffic was very obvious impact, the user made what they think the best product choice.

In fact, both Vine and Instagram are learning from the previous functional models. The same goes for Facebook to add geographic sign-in and topic tags. But it must be pointed out that this phenomenon of reference function, in advocating innovative Silicon Valley is not nothing new, and absolutely not shameful things, Facebook's timeline (Timeline) and praise (like) are the object of other companies to follow. After the Instagram, many social apps, including Twitter, have added photo filters, and no one has accused Twitter of imitating plagiarism.

And Facebook has not stopped releasing new products, but is accelerating innovation. This year, Facebook has launched a number of new products and features, from social search graph search to new newsfeed, Android desktop apps, Facebook home, and more. Whether or not it succeeds, these are the behavior that Facebook is constantly innovating.

Media and consumers alike, are advocating innovation, want to see new products and functions. Many small start-up companies can grow and grow, it is because of innovation and become a focus of attention, access to investment support, to win a large number of users. But when startups grow into big companies and even tech giants, with hundreds of millions of of users, there is a slowdown in innovation. In fact, however, these big companies have not lost their innovative capabilities, and their research and development teams are constantly developing new capabilities, just because of the huge platform that lowers the risk tolerance of innovation.

A start-up can launch new features without any hesitation, because they don't lose much, whether they fail or succeed. But as a listed technology giant, the launch of a new feature could affect hundreds of millions of of users, affecting the company's performance and share price, so they tend to be cautious when releasing new features, even though in-house research teams have long had innovative products. In this case, for reference to the market has been successful in a certain function, the introduction of their own research and development version, it is relatively safe and more.

From what I've learned, Facebook has planned to launch short video features as early as last year, even before Twitter bought Vine, but to make sure that Instagram's short video features have more of a different stand, they only postponed until June this year. From the release of the user response and the huge impact on Vine, Instagram also in the short video of this new field has achieved initial success.

Perhaps the model is not innovation, so it might be useful to look back at a few examples of innovative companies. As the industry's creative idol, jobs, he once said "excellent artist imitation, great artist stealing". Jobs was calm, and Apple's most exciting early innovations-the mouse and graphical user interface-were not original, but came from what he saw at Xerox Laboratories. Apple's Mackintosh computer, which attracted the world's attention, came from jobs ' imitation of Xerox technology, which he even dug away from the Xerox lab for several key engineers.

Microsoft's core business, Windows, also comes from Gates ' imitation of Steve Jobs. When Microsoft was developing software for Apple computers, Gates saw the Mackintosh engineering prototype and then started developing his own operating system, Windows. It can be said that Apple imitated Xerox, and Microsoft imitated Apple, which made the two big technology giants, Microsoft and Apple, the dominant PC operating system Windows and Mac OS today.

As Google, which is now leading the trend of innovation, they also have the same imitation. Google's social, buy, electricity, cloud services and many other businesses, are not their own initiative, but in other companies have been successful on the basis of the launch. Google Cloud Office applications Doc obviously borrowed from Microsoft Office Many design functions, and Google Chinese input method and Sogou between the "plagiarism controversy" also in the domestic spread of the uproar.

Today's Apple, Google and Microsoft are already Big Macs in the tech industry. They will also learn from each other's outstanding features, and Apple's iOS Notification Center is clearly mimicking Android's success. In fact, the innovation we are advocating is to discover the value of innovation, and then innovate with our own technology. "Jobs ' innovation is more than originality, it's discovering value," Wu said of jobs.

The really great technology people, the more important quality is to find all kinds of possible successful innovation value, and then with their own strength to launch new features, to win users and markets. Microsoft is not the first to do the operating system, Google is not the first to launch a search engine, Apple is not the first to develop smartphones, Facebook is not the first to release social networking sites, these great companies are in imitation of the existing successful mode, to their own innovation to push the great new products. Without imitation, there would be no such great technology companies.

It must be pointed out that imitation is not plagiarism, the real plagiarism is contemptible. No matter which company, imitate the existing function, must publish the product on the basis of their own research and development, and cannot copy the details of the opponent directly. After the popularity of the social application path, there are many similar applications in the country that mimic the path; imitation is not a problem, but outright plagiarism of the path application interface, or even just a change of color to dare direct online promotion, this behavior is indeed unlikely in Silicon Valley.

Perhaps some tech-media people are too eager to see innovation across the ages and shrug off new products from existing models for big companies. But revolutionary products do not appear every year, more often than not, technology companies and even start-ups are constantly improving on the basis of existing technology models, looking for and discovering potential elements and values of innovation, which are the differences between great innovators and mediocre imitators, and jobs ' greatness.

Many tech bloggers are also aware of this, so why do they like to scoff at copycat acts like Facebook and scoff at giant companies like Microsoft? Why is the poison tongue, high-end, Leng Yan become the most popular feature of technology blog?

Yesterday saw the Silicon Valley legendary entrepreneur Sien Park (Sean Parker) a word. "In this fast and lazy world, making money from blogging means that taking the time to do original reporting is a waste of time because sarcastic articles with a little bit of truth can be more efficient at getting traffic".