#Week 1. Brilliant ideas and fast growing projects that didn't end up well

Welcome to my blog for the course SPEAIT. My name is Carlos Rodriguez and my first blog entry is dedicated to 3 tech failures that led to a shift in the way the business was doing up to the moment of the release. I will focus in services that particularly shocked me in my early youth.


I will start with Napster, an online peer-2-peer file sharing service that endeavoured an incredible success for the time it was operative. The service reached a considerably high amount of users (about 26.4 million users), during a time when the number of internet connections was much smaller, with some estimates topping 80 million. By saying the time it was operative, I mean that it faced legal issues and closed down since it was undoubtedly tearing apart a very profitable music industry. The legal battle between Napster and Metallica heavy metal band was followed worldwide.

Even though it ended up as a failure, It opened the way for many other platforms and above all, it made the music industry realize that the digital music was here to stay.


I will move on with BlackBerry phones. The first smartphone that came up with solutions that paired perfectly with the market’s demands for some years. Back then the smartphones were more restricted to professional environments where the features of the phone matched up completely. In fact the firm signed huge contracts with governmental agencies.

The physical keyboard was a very convenient feature when the touchscreens were not as developed as they went afterwards. The capability to respond to emails in a easy way with its own BB mail service and the most beloved app, the Blackberry Messenger which allowed instant messaging between blackberrys. For us to look at the proportion of the share of the market of Blackberry, at one time, BlackBerry controlled 50% of the smartphone market in the US and 20% globally

Around 2007 with the release of the first iphone was a serious threat for the company and they were unable to catch up with rapid market changing. Their shift to touchpad screens were not as good as expected since you could experience a lot of bugs and the later appearance of android mobile software and the amount of apps available in both app store and google play were far more attractive for costumers and left the company without market share. Even though it was final a failure, they experienced a lot of success for some time and I think that is part of the downfall as they had their own software and hardware and to moved to an android software was probably hard to accept. 


To finish I would like to talk about Netscape web browser, the most dominant web browser in the early 90s and renown was its battle against internet explorer in the so called the first browser war. The main reason why windows explorer won this battle is that it was preinstalled in all windows operating systems and offered free to all users. Besides, the competition with windows led to Netscape to keep adding features without the proper check leading to many bugs. Even though they brought internet to households and created the basics of technology such as code like Javascript or protocols like ssl as they are still used today, they lost their way into the costumers by developing poorly-backed product direction changes.


Here below the sources used for this entry:

  1. https://time.com/4704250/most-successful-technology-tech-failures-gadgets-flops-bombs-fails/
  2. https://nextbigwhat.com/napster-digging-the-success-story/
  3. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/may/31/napster-twenty-years-music-revolution
  4. http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/napster/napster-md030601ord.pdf
  5. https://www.businessinsider.com/blackberry-smartphone-rise-fall-mobile-failure-innovate-2019-11
  6. https://airfocus.com/blog/why-did-netscape-fail/#:~:text=Product%20Strategy%20Mistake,market%20share%20hitting%20rock%20bottom.
  7. http://lookups.com.au/wiki/1G1-16739494.php

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