I don't agree with the supermarket analogy. I think the "popular bar" analogy is more appropriate. People go where everyone else goes.
There's a bar down the street that was packed every Friday night this time last year. Now it's dead. Everyone is at another bar 3 blocks away. Why? Because everyone else is there. How did this happen? I don't know. But if I was a bar or a social network, I'd try to figure it out so I could stay "hot". Otherwise, I'd die and never quite know why.
It also depends on what type of bar/website you want to build. Is it just a "cool" place, or is it a place for regulars to hang out at? I love going to the local dive bar to see familiar faces and share drinks with the neighbors. HN is similar to that. Sometimes, usually not by my personal choice, I have to go to those "cool" joints for events and such. That's fine too, but they obviously cater to their niches.
I used to live in Vegas for a while and most of the clubs on "the strip" were definitely catering to the cool crowd. How did they keep up with one another? Constant re-branding, marketing, positioning, theme parties, etc. It's incredibly tough competition but the financial rewards were also big. As a local, I only went when I had guests in town who insisted on the Vegas experience. Contrast that to the clubs for "locals", where they gave you rewards points for coming, cheap drink specials only if you knew, and a very friendly atmosphere.
That's a decent analogy. I remember all my friends almost simultaneously dumping Myspace for Facebook fairly quickly once they perceived the crowd's momentum in that direction. Now, no one I know uses Myspace, except to post band updates that I doubt anyone reads anyway (that all I ever used it for to begin with, what an ugly place that was!).
Facebook seems to be keeping 'hot' so far, amazingly enough, although there are 'elite' crowds forming at Twitter and the other places. Of course, I think that unlike bars, the people on a service can actually serve to keep each other there. Why go to Twitter if all my friends use Facebook? I might be elite, but I'd be all alone.
"Cool people" as far as nightlife goes tend to like being elite. Everyone likes being with "cool people". So once a bar gets popular and is always packed it stops being elite and the cool people move on. Once that happens the rest of the crowd moves to.
It's like cat and mouse and the only way to avoid it that I've seen is to maintain eliteness by turning away 95% of your potential customers.
Edit: or target university/college students with cheap drinks and cheezy promos and try to make them think your bar/club is a tradition. That works too.
I disagree with the thesis of this article. "Commodity Web Applications" underestimates the importance of getting details right. I voted it up, though, because I expect it to generate interesting discussion.
I thought the last statement summed up the thesis of the article quite well:
"It’s less about competing technology, and much more about competing user bases."
I happen to agree with this argument. It is PRECISELY the core reason why I always laugh when I read about the next "Digg killer".
If this thesis is correct, then the only way to create a "Digg killer" would be to build a community around a celebrity instead of around a technology. The technology is only an enabling factor, NOT the primary factor for social applications to become popular.
The focus on technology is misplaced when it comes to the viability of social applications.
There's a bar down the street that was packed every Friday night this time last year. Now it's dead. Everyone is at another bar 3 blocks away. Why? Because everyone else is there. How did this happen? I don't know. But if I was a bar or a social network, I'd try to figure it out so I could stay "hot". Otherwise, I'd die and never quite know why.