Don't Hate. Innovate.

posted by jangro on (3 years, 11 months ago)

You ever get the feeling that every idea in the world has been thought of already?

It happens to me every day. My brain's always working on the next "big idea" for us to work on. Once in a while I get that killer idea that I know could be a huge success.

It happened again to me yesterday. I had an idea for a fun website. It would also make a great Facebook app. It stuck with me all day and I had sort of mapped out how the site would work in my head. I started thinking about names for the website and came up with the perfect name. The plain two-word version of that name was taken by someone doing something completely unrelated, so I changed it up into something more fun and typed it into my browser...

DAMMIT. There it was. My idea, all finished and running on the domain that I though of.

How many times has this happened to you? How do you react to this kick in the stomach? Do you drop the idea? I think most people probably do.

I was reminded today that just because a good idea has been done already, doesn't mean that you cannot do it better.

We all know about the TinyURL service, right? You've got a big long URL you want to share with someone, you put it through TinyURL and they give you a nice short url that redirects to your long one. What an awesome idea. It's been around forever. 62 million urls shortened. Why would anyone ever try to do the same thing?

That didn't stop URLtea from trying. They do exactly the same thing but put their own spin on it. They've got their own take on the exact same service. In their case, you can annotate a link with a simple plain-text description on the end. And the site is prettier. Simple right? But it's working, because I see URLtea urls around all the time now, especially on Twitter.

urlTea - smooth sips of decanted web addresses-1.jpg

And just today I've spotted yet a third. PeaURL. Also prettier, and they've innovated even further. You can opt to get a readable url. So instead of gibberish, you get a url that is somewhat memorable. Again, simple, but well done. Maybe they'll grab a share of the market that TinyURL owns, but seems to be losing grasp of.

PEA URL-1.jpg

You've got a great idea that's been done before? Don't give up on it. Just do it better.


Comments & Reactions

  • jangro saved this to Web Development 3 years, 11 months ago
  • Posted by Thomas Sinfield 3 years, 11 months ago

    Why come up with your own idea, when you can steal someone else's and just change it to make it better!

  • Posted by BPeels 3 years, 11 months ago

    jangroz.com is open....

  • Posted by BPeels 3 years, 11 months ago

    jangroz.com' href='http://jangroz.com">jangroz.com'>http://jangroz.com">jangroz.com is open....

  • Posted by Kyle 3 years, 11 months ago

    I know that feeling all to well. Feels like someone knocked the wind out of you.

    Here's my story:
    http://somedirection.com/2007/05/21/missed-opportunities-compeet/

  • Posted by Shannon 3 years, 11 months ago

    Cool thanks. I knew about twitter, but the others seem great.

    I just finished a site myself.

    Between work and family, I don't get a lot of time online and responding to people on twitter usually happens all in a few minutes.

    This annoys people (including myself) to see a bunch of replies from one person all at once.

    In order to minimize this, I created TwitResponse. It's an autoresponder for twitter.

    Basically it allows me to schedule posts to show on twitter.

    So I can use twitter as it's suppose to be used and also respond to others without annoying everyone! :)

    ~Shannon
    http://www.twitresponse.com

  • Posted by Steve Winterhalter 3 years, 11 months ago

    Im awash with ideas myself, and finally in a position to role out a few. Some ideas that have been done over and over can be tweaked for a slightly different market segment, or adapted to a different type of revenue stream. For example some services can be adapted to an ad rev model rather than service fees.

    You don't always need to make something better to get in the market, you just have to make it more accessible.

  • Posted by sohpet 3 years, 11 months ago

    By BPeels on Mar 14, 2008

    I know that feeling all to well. Feels like someone knocked the wind out of you.

    Here’s my story:
    http://somedirection.com/2007/05/21/missed-opportunities-compeet/

    The story really beautifull.Thanks (:

  • Posted by sohpet 3 years, 11 months ago

    By BPeels on Mar 14, 2008

    I know that feeling all to well. Feels like someone knocked the wind out of you.

    Here’s my story: http://somedirection.com/2007/05/21/missed-oppo...

    The' href='http://somedirection.com/2007/05/21/missed-opportunities-compeet/">http://somedirection.com/2007/05/21/missed-oppo...

    The'>http://somedirection.com/2007/05/21/missed-opportunities-compeet/">http://somedirection.com/2007/05/21/missed-oppo...

    The story really beautifull.Thanks (:

  • Posted by George Conlow 3 years, 11 months ago

    Aw man. Happens to me from time to time, but only once with the exact same url and exact same idea - it was: www.chipin.com

    Dammit!

    (they' href='http://www.chipin.com">www.chipin.com

    Dammit!

    (they'>http://www.chipin.com">www.chipin.com

    Dammit!

    (they did a pretty good job though)

  • Posted by Greg 3 years, 10 months ago

    For every player there ten haters ot seems now adays.

  • Posted by dave 3 years, 10 months ago

    Haha. Yeah originality is hard to come by, but it is out there. The world is big, so many times we don't even get to see some of the most innovative and epic ideas out there.

    Nice post bruv.

  • Posted by Maximillian Gunther 3 years, 10 months ago

    Man, I didn't even know such service exist! For every problem there should be a solution, and idea, ... and along with it ... money.

  • Posted by Akhmad Guntar 3 years, 10 months ago

    From Karl Fisch' shift happen: We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist using technologies that haven't been invented in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet.

  • Posted by Maximillian Gunther 3 years, 10 months ago

    Man, I didn't even know such service exist! For every problem there should be a solution, and idea, ... and along with it ... money.

  • Posted by Akhmad Guntar 3 years, 10 months ago

    From Karl Fisch' shift happen:
    We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist using technologies that haven't been invented in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet.

  • Posted by BPeels 2 years, 2 months ago

    http://jangroz.com" rel="nofollow">jangroz.com is open....

  • Posted by Showtime's Dexter 2 years, 2 months ago

    Cool thanks. I knew about twitter, but the others seem great. I didn't even know such service exist

  • Posted by Showtime's Dexter 2 years, 2 months ago

    Cool thanks. I knew about twitter, but the others seem great. I didn't even know such service exist

  • Posted by PjnSports 2 years ago

    yeah the simple ideas are usually the best...

  • Posted by pashj 1 year, 9 months ago

    How do these url shortening services make money? It's like those image hosting websites. It seems like they give everything away for free, but don't really have an incentive to buy anything from them. Weird business model if you ask me.


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