Clicks and Bricks comparisons. How did the marketplace view customer loyalty when car buyers flocked to foreign manufacturers, shoppers flocked to discount retailers, etc? There used to be an old Vaudeville routine that ended in the famous line “But what have you done for me lately”. Customers tend to be fickle. Lack of reliability is a serious defect. Sure there is an advantage to being first and to having some cutesy names, but resting on laurels is dangerous, particularly when a service is not only ‘down’ but rather noticeably and annoyingly ‘down’.

Consider perhaps the “Digg It” buttons that started to appear on websites. They were first. Now there seem to be about a dozen such buttons with different logos that serve the same “vote to promote” function. There was no “customer loyalty” there. Along came some companies that were merely different but saw a “Me-Too” opportunity. Twitter was first. Congratulations to them. They may “deserve” to survive and prosper for any number of real or imagined moral or entrepreneurial reasons. Being ‘deserving’ doesn’t really seem to cut it in the marketplace though.

Short…does have real advantages – a great point.

Perhaps Twitter will be dislodged by a Newcomer’s Installation Wizard developed by a Twitter-wannabe? Sort of a Plug and Play Twitter-Successor that makes the transition seamless and instantaneous.

Texting is “Big Bucks”.. yet its formally known as Short Message Service. I think the same applies to these ‘not sufficient to be called blog entries’. Short has real advantages.