In the old days there was plenty of room to do business in the same market as a competitor. There were market conditions that kept things separate, usually geography. Running a printing company in Suburb A of a city meant there was room for another printing company to operate in Suburb B in same city. If you live in a 'bigish' city you will know there are areas in your City that you have never visited and may not in the future. Nestled in those unknown areas are businesses you have also never heard of that others are doing business with right now.

With the internet the rules have changed. It is easy to be another restaurant on a street of restaurants but you may only ever get the crumbs of a large pie.

One of the things that motivates the One Winner rule is search. We typically take search results at face value assuming the top result is the most relevant. Google spends it's life trying to ensure you get the most relevant result first. It used to be if you optimised your site effectively you could own that slot but over time Google introduced other factors into it's algorithm. Things like reputation and buzz which tend to promote sites that have a good reputation or sites that are causing huge stirs around the web.

Consider the giants. Google, facebook, twitter and more recently Groupon. Four examples of how companies become the one true winner in their respective market places. For a long time search tools, social communities and micro-blogging clients existed before these three took prominence. My point being that they were not first, they just did something right, which may include they just got lucky as well.

I have always believed that I was happy to be another Restaurant on a strip of Restaurants. Taking some of the business like all the other businesses. Depending on your long term aspirations, this might be enough. You might be happy with a good income without having to own the space. I still believe this personally. But if you want to excel you probably need to own your space.

Don't extend beyond your niche. Focus on the main thing. Don't get distracted by the 'sounds like a good idea' add ons that seem so appealing.

Focus focus focus.

Thoughts?