DISQUS

Mark · 1 year ago

AutoCAD may have a higher search volume at the moment, but this just shows how much more opportunity SolidWorks have in the market.

Josh · 1 year ago

Hey Mark, Thanks for the comment! Yeah, that is one way of looking at it, but then the question becomes, what are they doing to capture that opportunity? I don't think any CAD company right now is leveraging the web like they could. It's always thought of the same client-side, computer based type of system that is only a tool. cloth diapers are like an entire environment. it may be a cheesy example, but what is it about cloth diapers that are capturing the community, and not just community, but individuals that want to become part of the conversation?

I think alot of companies need to look at how they can achieve that on a corporate level. If the socialsphere forming on the web is seen as a completely separate thing to regular business operations, that company is loosing valuable feedback, involvement and revenue that may be completely lost to the company who did see the value in adopting early technologies.

This can get into the whole development side of things as well. I'll take a look at that in another post.

MikeO · 1 year ago

A lot of people are aware of AutoCAD, it's like Kleenex. When someone sits down and wants to do a garden layout they don't think of SolidWorks or Pro/Engineer. 3D is very intimidating for many people, my 7 year old can sketch 2D, it's crap but she can. It's the birds eye view. Now tell someone to draw it as they are standing there and give it depth, you might as well ask the square root of pi to the 10th decimal.

Josh · 1 year ago

Good analogy MikeO. It's also weird. regular diapers are easier, but cloth diaper sites and conversations are more popular on the web. it's an interesting look at community. i think the community forms around a need (health/cost. waste for the cloth diaper peeps) and can go viral from there.

Matthew West · 1 year ago

My wife insisted we go to cloth diapers for the new baby. Did you know there are sites out there where people will buy used diapers? No joke. She told me there's some site called diaperswappers.com where these transactions take place. I think that's a community I want to keep my distance from.

Josh · 1 year ago

man, matthew, I think you are in the same throes of child rearing as we are :) - the move to cloth diapers is what totally inspired this post. I'm familiar with diaperswappers... and the various ways to wrap a cloth diaper around a hiny. The Cloth Diaper, formula-free, baby carrier community is just amazing.

maeva · 1 year ago

I don\'t feel like entering in such a consideration.