Sunday Snapshot 11/06/16

The copy cost: How much does it cost a company to copy the best-performing features of its rivals? Probably not much, you'd assume, since the hard work of developing a new idea or even coming up with something substantially distinct but similar isn't part of the process. Lately Facebook has seemed to be more aggressively mimicking its closest competitors, and Snapchat specifically, with the apparent aim of helping it maintain and grow its user base using engagement strategies with a proven track record.

But Facebook (and, for the purposes of this discussion, Facebook includes Instagram and WhatsApp as well) stands to lose out significantly if it continues to focus so diligently on copying things its competition is doing. For a company like Facebook, it may seem like any cost associated with replicating smart features within its own products is minimal, including those of time and talent, since Facebook is one of few companies who can recruit top talent both a high level and at a steady, high volume.

Having enough people and money to work on both feature cloning and new feature development still doesn't mean you should commit to a practice of doggedly doing both, however. While the perceived benefit of replicating things that are working for demographics that Facebook desires quickly and an increasing clip is user growth or retention in the short term, in the long term, micromanaging a defense of potential obsolescence has less obvious costs that could end up causing more damage than good.

Obsessive cloning is a heel-based posture; if you're always reacting to what's working for your competition, that's partly just good business, but it's also partly a way to offload the responsibility and onus of research, experimentation and innovation. And once outsourced, those are particularly difficult traits to build back into an organization. If a painter with terrific raw talent ends up spending their entire working life attempting to perfectly mimic a past master's style, they're going to be wonderful forgers, but not much else.

Facebook is a little like Cronus in Greek mythological, pathologically devouring his offspring so that he won't be usurped and succeeded by any of them. Ultimately, Zeus managed to overthrow Cronus because he swallowed a stone disguised as his new child instead of the child himself, and was blind to the actual threat because he'd spent do long assuming he knew how to deal with the perceived one. Facebook may be able to gobble up its potential successors for now, but if it relaxes on real product innovation as a result of doing so obsessively, it's only setting itself up for a potential fall.

Get the context:

• WhatsApp is testing a clone of Snapchat Stories, called Status
• Facebook tried to buy Asian Snapchat clone Snow
• Facebook is now testing its Snapchat Stories clone in Australia
• Facebook scraps another Snapchat clone: 24-hour "Quick Updates"