Why Facebook Beat Twitter
Ten
years of innovation, lesson No. 2: Everybody stumbles.
I’ll admit that in the early days, I really
didn’t get Twitter. Facebook was intuitive for me: a way to connect with my
friends, my family, my colleagues. Twitter just seemed kind of . . . vague. But
I eventually got with the program and saw the power in a new kind of broadcast
medium. In Fast Company’s 2012
World's Most Innovative Companies issue, both Facebook
and Twitter were ranked in the top 10, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was on
the cover. (Mark Zuckerberg had been on the cover in 2010.) At that point,
there was still talk that Twitter could be a billion-user platform.
The next year, though,
neither Facebook nor Twitter made
our Most Innovative Companies list. It wasn’t that we suddenly dismissed them.
But they each had failed—at that point—to adapt themselves in a leading way to
key growth challenges. As deputy editor David Lidsky wrote in a special
commentary, "Both companies have turned their focus away from users and
toward shareholders to get bigger, not better. Revenue is great, but not at the
expense of the product."
Did we make a mistake, especially given how Facebook’s business
has soared since then? Nope. We excluded the social network because it had
stumbled in the transition to mobile—and, in hindsight, it needed that setback
to get where it is today. How Zuckberberg and team responded, in fact, sets
them apart from many others—including Twitter. While Twitter has had trouble
remaking its service—antagonizing outside developers, failing to effectively
invite in new users—Facebook attacked its growth challenges with urgency. And
it continues to apply that sort of urgency for change (notably in Instagram’s
reaction to the Snapchat threat), leaving its erstwhile rival way, way behind.
Every business falters
sometimes. What defines an enterprise, though, is how it responds to those
stumbles. Nike took the top spot (and the cover) of the same 2013 Most
Innovative Companies issue that excluded Facebook and Twitter, on the basis of
two innovations: FuelBand, which was perhaps the first breakthrough consumer
wearable; and Nike’s Flyknit technology for sneaker design and manufacturing.
Fuelband rode a wave of great buzz, commanding central attention at two
consecutive SxSW festivals, but it ultimately failed to sustain as an ongoing
business. Meanwhile, Flyknit has radically remade the industry and become a
central element in Nike’s product mix. The fact that only one of those
innovations continues to bear fruit simply underscores that there are no
guarantees in this time of change; a 50% success rate is a victory.
Resilience, then, is as much a requirement of innovative cultures
as creativity. Tellingly, the year before Facebook and Twitter were excluded
from our Most Innovative Companies list, it was Nike that failed to make our
ranking. As we explained alongside our 2013 cover story (which featured Serena
Williams and Nike CEO Mark Parker):
The folks at Nike were not happy with Fast Company at
this time last year. After appearing on our Most Innovative Companies ranking
for four years, they weren't included. Neither were several other perennials,
including GEand Disney. It's not that
these businesses suddenly lost their mojo. But in a climate where the velocity
of change is accelerating, these companies didn't have a compelling-enough
breakthrough for us to highlight. The companies that did make this year's list
illustrate how in the Age of Flux, continuous improvement, speed of change, and
breadth of ambition are more important than ever.
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