TITLE: Sometimes, Evolution Does What No Pivot Can
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: June 17, 2018  9:52 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 From
<A HREF="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/revenue-streams">
   an old New Yorker article</A>
 about Spotify:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 YouTube, which is by far the largest streaming-music site in
 the world (it wasn't designed that way--that's just what it
 became)...
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

 Companies starting in one line of business and evolving into
 something else is nothing new.  I mean, The Connecticut Leather
 Company became
<A HREF="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco">
   Coleco</A>
 and made video game consoles.  But there's something about
 software that make this sort of evolution seem so normal.  We
 build a computer system to solve one problem and find that our
 users -- who have needs and desires that neither we nor they
 fully comprehend -- use it to solve a different problem.
 Interesting times.  Don't hem yourself in, and don't hem your
 software in, or the people who use it.
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