The concept of starting with an MVP is very important.
You're not going to build a better Facebook by adding more features than they have, the only way to do it would be to create a simpler platform and focus on the users who find your site the most useful (for Facebook it was college students, now it's families and old friends).
Just think if HN started to allow pictures in posts and comments or allowed a wider variety of posts (lolz look at my cat), the site would likely be ruined instantly. It would have also never been as popular as it is if it allowed these types of posts from the beginning.
There is also the method of adding that one feature that the big companies can't add, because it's one of their main sources of revenue. Look at DuckDuckGo, they started as a much simpler version of Google Search except it promises as much privacy as possible.
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The concept of starting with an MVP is very important.
You're not going to build a better Facebook by adding more features than they have, the only way to do it would be to create a simpler platform and focus on the users who find your site the most useful (for Facebook it was college students, now it's families and old friends).
Just think if HN started to allow pictures in posts and comments or allowed a wider variety of posts (lolz look at my cat), the site would likely be ruined instantly. It would have also never been as popular as it is if it allowed these types of posts from the beginning.
There is also the method of adding that one feature that the big companies can't add, because it's one of their main sources of revenue. Look at DuckDuckGo, they started as a much simpler version of Google Search except it promises as much privacy as possible.