success is not just the sum of the features. offering something that other players have won't bring success, unless you can convince people it is significantly better, and _prove_ it. offering something competitors don't have also won't bring success, unless you convince people it's something they need or desire.<p>reinventing the wheel won't work unless you can show people that something is missing or wrong with what they're already used to. even then, it won't happen overnight, and it may not happen at all. take G+ for example. they made some not-insignificant changes to how people communicate in their network. they've already got a ton of users, but it's only been ~2 months. it could just be flashy-new, and could fade in another 12.<p>maybe another way to think about things is about what social networks represent: interactions between people. you have people you know, people you don't, people you want to talk to, people you want to listen to, things you want to share publicly, things that are private, etc. etc. maybe instead of building up a feature set, it would be beneficial to think about human interactions and relationships, and see how software may be able to represent that better than current models (G+ is trying this with circles).