Facebook remains one of the most valuable, largest and best known technology companies in the world. It, along with Google, dominates the online advertising market. But in recent years, it has made far more headlines for cloning popular features from competitors than it has for building innovative features and products first on its own.
Tucker Marion, an associate professor at Northeastern University focused on entrepreneurship and innovation, said copying and acquiring rivals isn’t a bad strategy, but it needs to be coupled with the company also pursuing its own original ideas.
“You really can’t sustain yourself unless you’re doing that,” he said. “At some point you’re going to face a reckoning and look in the mirror and realize you’re the ancient quarterback that needs to do something else.”
A representative for Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.
On the other hand, some of its efforts to mimic rivals have been hugely successful. Instagram Stories, its Snapchat clone, has become a default way of communicating and connecting for millions of people, myself included. Facebook Marketplace has emerged as a popular and seemingly safer alternative to Craigslist (at least I feel that way), and it’s become my go-to way to sell things locally. (I’ve also bought a coffee table, multiple pieces of art and a desk on Facebook Marketplace, just in the past year.)
To some extent then, Facebook has openly embraced the role of an iterator rather than an innovator.
