Difficult question, Yosem.
I would try splitting it in two.
First, what causes tide turns in general?
Hard to answer by numbers besides a generic "80/20 rule", but seems
there are other possible triggers besides marketing.
Malcolm Gladwell in "The Tipping Point" suggests that (1) few people
have
I was describing the "Silicon Valley system," not necessarily endorsing it.
Here is Wikipedia's description of Diaspora's social networking site, which
started out as a Silicon Valley startup that ultimately became a non-profit
foundation:
Diaspora is a nonprofit, user-owned, distributed social
What is "Diaspora?" My concept of diaspora is people fleeing their homelands to
stay out of harm's way...
And, btw, I refuse to believe that the only way to go for any "startup" is to
sell out to venture capitalists and McMarketeers.
The issue here is moral, not economic. So think of The
Network effects are powerful. And to create network effects, except in the
rare case of organic viral growth, requires a lot of marketing and
advertising. And marketing and advertising requires raising a lot of money.
And raising a lot of money requires angel investors, venture capital
investors,
Because of the intangible nature of the internet, people don't treat the
privacy of their communications with the same bar they would treat (we assume)
paper correspondence.
Having said that, it's fundamental to understand that people won't leave
Facebook, Gmail or Windows, simply because,
Richard, you are right: maintaining email servers requires some skill
and has a cost.
Gmail does this reliably and is attractive for most non-technical users.
But now imagine this:
Your favourite snail-mail service offers your university paper letters
delivery, but at these conditions:
1) being
