Community Services

2005-05-30

I'm still quite a newcomer to this sort of thing so I'm commenting on the blog of a usual suspect - Jonathan Schwartz at Sun. I intend to grow my horizons as I get the hang of things.

"As will become more obvious by the day, you can compete against a product, but it's close to impossible to compete against a community," says the man here - largely in reference to Netbeans vs. Eclipse. This may be correct if "you" is an individual, but in large part most of the "you"'s will be communities themselves, variously supported by vendors and other bodies. Competition occurs between communities and within communities, so I wouldn't be rushing to prepare for the death of the individual competitor just yet, as it might not exist.

Also, and just an aside, if Jonathan's so into the new thinking wrt communities, blogs, "the conversation" and the like, why doesn't he allow comments on his blogs? Looks a bit singular to me.