That's why "technical novelty" ranks ridiculously low on scale of things that make most successful software businesses these days: if anything technical novelty is more of an albatross on most software businesses than a saving grace.
Building traction in software is more about the 100s of other concerns that apply to every business: brand recognition, communicating your value proposition effectively, being able to sell to the target customer effectively, having the correct UX, the right proofs, the list goes on.
Copying that is just as hard as ever, if not harder.
Not convinced. Why did Google beat Yahoo? Why is Facebook huge while Friendster and Myspace are jokes? At some point - perhaps further down the line than most of us are used to thinking of - technical ability matters.
And even Facebook definitely didn't win because if some technical choice... no one cared what tech stack powered a social media site, and if anything Facebook was less advanced than MySpace as far as users were concerned.
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If you're talking about how it matters further down the line, then you're walking away from the wrapper thesis too: the whole line being parroted is that it's just an API wrapper ripe for the copying. Good luck getting to the "further down the line" reliably as a company, let alone down the line and then killing your competitor with a game plan that mostly consists of copying them.