The Next Big Thing (for this week only) [Part 2]...

As soon something is declared as a 'hot technology', or 'the next big thing' you end up with a million or so copycats trying to cash in on someone else's success. How many search engines do we need, or how many web browsers do we need to browser to surf the web, etc... ?

Pretty soon companies are going to start developing their own 'social networking' software, or declaring they're software already has this functionality. The same thing is happened with 'Web Services', then previous to that we had 'Application Services Providers' (ASP), and 'Web Portals', etc..

I am not advocating that we discourage innovation, but it just sometimes get ridiculous with the amount of copycat technologies out there. I don't personally believe in 'Darwinism', but one of his principals holds true in my mind. This principal is the 'survival of the fittest', it states in the wild the strongest animals will survive. In the business world like the animal world this principal applies, the strongest companies will survive while the weaker companies will die.

The only real innovation that comes from these copycat companies is the fact that they will add new features or enhance existing ones that are copied by their competitors. And this cycle will continue to repeat itself...

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