Does the overwhelming popularity of something discourage creation of alternatives?

If someone has a near-monopoly in a certain area of SL business, does it discourage you to try your luck at it, for fear that you won't even begin to compete with the big fish?
Should there be some incentive to small business owners?
Or some incentive based on originality?
Should there be some kind of anti-trust regulations in SL?

Interesting take on this. To me it seems just the opposite. If you create something that sparks a large demand, you only enjoy a brief grace period before people rush in with their own version, often with added features.

Silly Eggy of course not. There's such a low break even point here. Land, or booth rental, are relatively cheap. The cost of business is mostly accumulated in time and external software that can be used for other things as well. I hear newbies telling the "breeze in, ROI, and make a profit during the first couple of months" story everywhere I go. Most people aren't getting fabulously wealthy off it all, but I've not heard many stories, or fears, of failure.

I can't speak for people's egos though. Someone might not be willing to market a product because they fear that the continued domination of an existing item might be perceived as a failure. That would be sad because they stand to loose a lot less, and gain a lot more, here than they would in the real world for trying to make a hobby pay for itself.

The incentive to small business owners is potential profit.

The first person to create a really wildly useful product or service is at a disadvantage. They foot all the costs to develop the goodie, then they test the waters with the goodie. If the market loves it, others can see that and will not have to spend nearly as much money or take as much risk in deploying their own goodie. They also often have the advantage of being able to add improvements to the goodie that the original competitor didn't think of, or didn't have time to implement, or currently can't implement because of the way the original goodie was built.

Just like real life.

Awesome.

Well, I am absolutely amazed I have been able to hold my position at the top of the furry intomate attachment market for as long as I have. Even so, others ARE grabbing market share.

I believe that the real world should be more like SL in that reguard... I am a firm believer that if someone can improve on your product they should be able to market that improvement. It would force US corperations and buisnesses to stop letting products stagnate simply because nobody else can market the product at ALL let alone beter than theirs.

The IP rights in SL are vastly different from RL IP rights and I for one am very glad that there are no patents in SL. They would hurt the way the economy works, and beyond that I believe they hurt the way RL economy works as well.

With Second Life being just another technological extension of "real life," I don't think it would be impossible to patent some process or product based on SL technology. Not sure how long that would take, but the results could be very interesting.

I'm not an enemy of the idea of patents -- though I think in recent times the system has been abused a good deal.

The main aspect of real world IP that does exist in Second Life is the good ol' Trade Secret. Plenty of devices are made in SL using some new and clever technique that is quickly reverse engineered -- no protections against doing that in SL.

Anyway, my take on SL products is that if anyone can duplicate your product within an afternoon, or if a free tool exists that obviates the use of your product, your product was not unique enough to sustain a market. Try, try again. Products that have been finely engineered for quality, that have superb support (questions answered and product updates, specifically -- Seburo, anyone?) that are unique in design and serve a specific, recognizable need will be very, very successful and very difficult to supplant.

But even these are not invulnerable.

Business is tough! Just try starting a physical business.

I think the opposite - I think it encourages it.

Case in point:

Go see how many pairs of stilettos are advertised in the forums every day.

I think when someone makes something WILDLY popular people scramble to get a chunk o the pie.


Siggy.

I used to make animals but seeing all these amazing animals (that are also popular) I kind of gave up. I just dont enjoy the outcome of what I make seeing animals that look far more amazing. So I would say for some yup........

Heh. Antitrust laws never work.

If you really want to nail 'em, it's called a progressive tax.

Ultimately, I'm against these forms of protection though. I think that social darwinism takes precidence, and ultimately large monopolies fall prey to laziness and greed, dying from within. Counterpoint, stacked odds bring in people wanting to succeed precisely because it's risky (and popular).

And yeah, you can quote me as a scripterati, "omg antibusiness" person with that.

Nope, antitrust laws never work as Jeff pointed out. Take Microsoft for example. There had been some anti trust lawsuits pinned against them, but yet they still have a firm grip on the industry.

Why would the government step in and say this is wrong? Since they're the ones puttin the bill for the government anyhow.

There was one case, regarding (Ma Bell?) Can't remember the name, but the telephone company was forced to splinter off into smaller competitive companies.

In any case, I don't think Linden Labs can enforce any business to splinter if one person is highly successful at it.

I think it depends on the product, I'm reluctant to try clothing because of how good all the wonderful designers out there are.. But thats more about quality than popularity..

I would not say that all anti-trust law is useless. And yes, it was AT&T that was split up. Microsoft is a different issue -- there have been lawsuits for ages but little actual regulation placed on their heads (although the EU is starting to get serious on them). I'm all for keeping government out of business, but there are times when it is necessary, whether to regulate working conditions, or to prevent the sort of predatory behavior this country saw in the era of Standard Oil.

LL could very easily pass some sort of anti-trust law -- "if you want to continue to play, you need to divest this part of your creative empire" -- but I don't think they would. NOT LEAST because there is tons of competition in SL, and competition will only increase as the market opportunity grows.

For one thing, there simply aren't the same dynamics of product distribution in SL that enable predatory behavior in RL. There are some strong brands already in SL, but that's ok. It is a barrier to entry, but not an overwhelming one.

A few businesses failing or creators exiting a market do not mean that predatory behavior is being practiced. Remember, no business has an entitlement to succeed.

Consider the Seburo Compact Exploder [sic]. It is cited as the single most recognized object in SL, yet I am with great regularity blown away in the sandboxes (-boxen?) by weapons of other make. Hilarity ensues.

i really dopnt know which crazy guy decided it was a good idea to be able to patent concepts and methods, if peoples can reverse engineer your thing in an afternoon then maybe you should consider about doing something else than scripting or raise the bar higher. But pretending "you cannot do this because i did it before you" is just ... bullshit

and well for the seburo its also tied to a big personality. I saw other guns made by other peoples that where as interesting as the seburo but that never really got popularity

Idunno. I usually make stuff because I specifically don't see it already made OR the one that's out there is f'ing expensive.

Take, for example, my Follow Widget. It allows you to follow other users automatically in case you can't walk or just don't want to. I couldn't find a device that did this already, so I decided to make one. I'm not much of a coder, I usually just put stuff together from existing parts. I've seen some devices like this, but those were usually slave collars. So I happened to find the person that makes those (Leena Khan, Cat-Goddess), comissioned a 'safe' version, and now I have it for sale for pretty cheap.

As for my ZeroSuit, that's another mess altogether, mostly (heavily) adapted public code, a few comissioned scripts, and stuff I've written on my own, in one package.

I just don't see stuff like this around.
There are plenty of niche markets if people are willing to fill them.

It only discourages losers and whiners, so that means most of the population.

I really don't know the answer to this one. What I do know is that after doing some market research I saw that we could produce comparable items at less than half of the price of the others. I don't understand why everyting in Second Life costs so much so we are doing our little part to control inflation by offering nice goods at a reasonable price.

A pair of panties costing $50? Come on give me a break.

No. I make it better and destroy the monopoly.

For me, it has nothing to do with the popularity of an item, it's got everything to do with what it does, and how good it is. For me, it's about having stuff that works well.

If an item already exists that fulfills my need, I don't want to waste my time reinventing it just so I can say "I made this". I might as well just buy it. If I think I can do better, I would (and have) approach the creator and try to strike up a partnership. That way I'd only spend my time improving something rather than build it from scratch.

Besides, better to work in a collaboration - it's less effort, and that's how you get everybody's best contributions

I needed one of your widgets this weekend! I was taking a guided tour of a campus-like facility and you can move so quickly with flying that I had to be constantly TP'd instead. With a Follow Widget, problem solved! Where do I find one?