Ask HN: Show me your product with your competitors and differences

Why do we have multiple products for the same problem?<p>At a very simple level...someone sees opportunity. That is, they believe can do it better, and sometimes they do.<p>Walmart wasn&#x27;t the first discount store.<p>Facebook wasn&#x27;t the first social network.<p>The iPod wasn&#x27;t the first mp3 player.<p>Etc.<p>Where things go wrong is that very often competitor converge (into a sea of sameness) instead of diverging (each into less competitive markets). Perhaps we are wired for conflict and to fight toe to toe, instead of fleaing and prospering elsewhere?<p>In any case, for more details on why and how to avoid cookie-cutter-ness:<p>- Zero to One <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Zero_to_One" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Zero_to_One</a><p>- Blue Ocean Shift <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blueoceanstrategy.com&#x2F;what-is-blue-ocean-shift&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.blueoceanstrategy.com&#x2F;what-is-blue-ocean-shift&#x2F;</a><p>Of course there are other sources of inspiration.

Just dividing up the market between two (or a few more) pretty much identical products&#x2F;offerings is how many mature products end up. It happens because because for, say, two competitors in a market, the marginal return on investment for trying to capture more market drops off, and if they all try to be the only provider... there&#x27;s a chance the other one will win that game so it&#x27;s easiest and less risky to just divide up the market.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hotelling%27s_law" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hotelling%27s_law</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Nash_equilibrium" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Nash_equilibrium</a><p>It happens a lot...<p>CVS &#x2F; Walgreens<p>Home Depot &#x2F; Loews<p>...

My product: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;emojirades.pages.dev&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;emojirades.pages.dev&#x2F;</a><p>A daily emoji + charades game where users are shown 3 emojis and have to guess the word.<p>With regards to gameplay and being a &quot;daily&quot; game, I drew inspiration from Wordle: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;games&#x2F;wordle&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;games&#x2F;wordle&#x2F;index.html</a>

Ironically, my product is to come up with product ideas: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;insanelygood.tools&#x2F;ideas" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;insanelygood.tools&#x2F;ideas</a><p>What I&#x27;ve noticed is that most products are trying to solve one singular problem but in different ways.

people approach problems differently.<p>look at linear, asana, trello, jira, and shortcut for example. similar problems, but different approaches. different tastes, different preferences.<p>aws, gcp, azure, digitalocean, hetzner, vultr too. similar problems, similar solutions, differing interfaces and differing quality of support.

My product: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlineornot.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlineornot.com&#x2F;</a><p>My competitors: there are thousands, and yet we still solve the same problem in different ways