Better is not always the better

It’s 3 and a half months already since I started this site. This is my 50^th post. Currently, I got more than 6500 views, 241 comments, 115 Facebook likers, 18 Twitter followers and 15 Google followers for this page.

So what’s with all these numbers? No, I’m not bragging about them. It’s not even worth bragging as it is a below average growth compared to most in the blogosphere. But then, I’m very thankful to those who take their time dropping by here to read a piece of my mind and in return, share their own in the comments section.

So why am I posting all these statistics?

This morning, my curiosity brought me into searching for the most viewed YouTube videos of all time. There was a top 10 list that I found. All of them have at least 340 million views. All of them are music videos except for one. It’s a short amateur shot family film clip showing two very young kids having fun. Here it is:

Charlie bit my finger - again !

The first question I had after watching it was how come such video reached almost half a billion views? I believe that the uploader didn’t even think that it would reach a thousand at first. He might still be in disbelief up to now that this video reached 465 million views and counting. Compared to other videos in the list and also those which aren’t in there which were produced using a lot of money, time and effort, it’s very surprising how it surpassed all of them.

But then, if we look at the most successful, most known, must bought stuffs in the world, they are not necessarily the best things there is compared to their competitors. For example, probably you can think of 2 or 3 other fast food chains which offer better burgers than McDonald’s. I bet you can also name a couple of coffee chains that brews coffee which taste greater than Starbucks. And lastly, I know you can give a long list of brands of smartphones or gadgets that proves to be better than what the Apple has to offer.

This case is not limited to bigger brands only. Even within your neighborhood, there are people who are more popular than the other guys in town when it comes to the service or product that they provide, and yet there are arguably a lot of better options in the competition that the people are aware of. But still, these guys continuously grab the larger share of the market.

The truth is there are no specific recipes for such kind of success. It could be honesty, hard work, timing, right branding, proper networking, luck or any combination of these things. Therefore, it’s probably a mistake if we only focus on getting better at what we are doing and forgetting totally about the people whom we would like to share our products or services with.  This is reality and no one should be discouraged about it. Just keep in mind that no matter how perfect our products or services are, in the end, the public is still the one to judge. We might think that we have the better one, but still they may think otherwise.