Sometimes knowing when to stop trying to be the market leader is good for you.
Everyone wants to be Top Dog and we all want to be known as the go-to place for people to find our products or services. But there are times at which accepting that you’re not the biggest can be a distinct advantage.
Take MySpace, for example. Yesterday, I tweeted that they have release a new app to help musicians maintain their MySpace page and update their Facebook Fan Page at the same time. While I’m sure that MySpace is still smarting from being the go-to social networking site for a good couple of years way-back-when, they have now accepted that the vast majority of people use Facebook as their primary social networking tool.
The problem that MySpace faces is that while it’s ingeniously designed for musicians in particular, it’s fairly useless to those individuals and bands if the only people using the site are the musicians and bands themselves. The artists want to connect with their fans and the easiest way to do that is through Facebook.
By effectively helping their members to advertise themselves on Facebook, MySpace are helping to ensure that those who prefer the interface and usability of their site over Facebook can still use it to reach millions of fans who may never have discovered them if they had stuck solely to Facebook.
Biggest isn’t always best, especially if you know how to piggy-back on the success of a larger player to give your core customer base exactly what they want from your product.