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Thanks for the comments guys. Actually, that's a big point of what I'm writing here. These ideas just keep getting copied and morphed into something else. It's ok to copy. It's ok to try and make it your own without being petrified someone else is already doing it.

Many people using tgethr or breeze don't know how to setup a listserv. I've got my in laws on tgethr. They don't understand how to even attach files to their emails. Google groups doesn't highlight code fragments I send to other developers. There's all sorts of things like that where 37signals and I are trying to copy these old ideas and make them our own.

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I mentioned this earlier when this story showed up at HN and I would say this again. There could be plethora of such services out there but until and unless they provide a seamless migration utility (to move stuff out of Yahoogroups/Googlegroups) none of them would be of any help. Yahoo/Googlegroups are huge because people have been using them for a very long time and nobody in the right mind would attempt to use any unknown service for listserv and archiving.

Very true. And vice versa is actually a pretty neat idea. Youngme Moon who I mention in the article has a book called Different which I highly recommend. She's got a bit in there about differentiating yourself by making it insanely easy for people to leave your service. Most folks make it hard to even find a cancel link (I know I've been guilty of this), let alone make it super easy to move their data out into a competitor.

It's on my priority list actually for some future projects to make it super easy to quit and migrate data out of my stuff to a competitor.

She's got a bit in there about differentiating yourself by making it insanely easy for people to leave your service.

Are there any examples of this leading to success?

Zappos is a great example of doing this kind of thing. From anecdotes, it sounds like if you call Zappos to order something that they don't have in stock, they'll help you find a competitor that has it. There's some insurance companies that do this too. They'll help get you quotes from competitors. Amazon does this a bit too with their outbound advertising links. (Of course for Amazon there's still a direct monetary incentive)

Sometimes it's a great hook to help potential customers feel more comfortable doing business by giving them a good reason to trust you. You're doing what's right for them as a customer, not necessarily what's right for you as a business.

Gmail seems like a decent example. Unlike a lot of other webmail providers, they made it easy to access your e-mail with a standard e-mail client and thereby download your full archives. With Google Apps, you can use Gmail on your own domain and switch away whenever you want by just re-pointing your MX record. I use Gmail on my own domain for my main e-mail, and could switch away in an instant if I wanted to.

Ah yeah, that's a great example. In fact, if I remember right, Gmail has always been a lot more friendly with getting mail out of gmail than services like hotmail and yahoo mail have (doesn't Yahoo still delete inactive account email?). I think by now hotmail and yahoo have tried to follow suit, but I think that was another reason people gravitated toward gmail (though minor compared to space and great web ui). It just seemed like if it sucked, no harm. I still have all my mail.

Pretty sure it was there from the start, yes. People remember how revolutionary it was for the storage and UI, but making client access available for free was just as big of a deal at the time. I'd never use a service that didn't provide that, so it certainly was a big factor in getting me to use Gmail, and I imagine the same is true for a lot of others. Certainly seems to have worked out for them.

These ideas just keep getting copied and morphed into something else

Why not write about that, then?

Well, there's no mention that the idea predates you. I have nothing against you copying the idea at all, and take to heart the main point of your article. It's just that your lead-in talking about Breeze and Tgethr omits any mention of any preceding technologies, and that absence makes it sound like you're saying Tgethr was first but you don't mind if people copy you.

I think you have a good point, but it seems poorly made. You lead with a question whose answer is an obvious, "No, because the idea predates both of us by decades." It just ends up not being relevant to the subsequent discussion.

But I do mention that the idea predates me. I mention that I got it from wanting something out of Famspam.

Yes, you mention it, way down, and even there it's another recent service doing what's been done for decades.

Like I said, the real problem is that you start off with a question which has an obvious answer, but then ignore than obvious answer, which makes it look like you either somehow don't know, or are trying to ignore it. It just seems like a bad way to start off a discussion of how ideas propagate.

At least we now know he has a wife.