this small team of 12 invented the like button, had ex-Google engineers from Gmail & Maps
built a much superior product, yet twitter killed it in just one summer.
it was called friendfeed - and in 2008, tech insiders believed it would beat twitter
real-time feeds, threaded comments, powerful search - everything twitter didn’t have
11 of their 12 employees were engineers, and they just kept building
meanwhile, twitter spent $11k at SXSW putting live tweets on plasma screens
they brought Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, Shaq, and many more celebs who brought millions with them
and twitter went from just another startup to a global phenomenon
friendfeed kept shipping features but twitter kept shipping distribution and won
facebook later acquired friendfeed for $50M - mostly for the team.
big lesson for founders who feel they’re stuck:
you probably don’t have a product problem - you have a distribution problem. distribution is everything
the best product doesn’t win, the one that reaches people first does
you can invent the like button and still lose if nobody ever clicks it