To make an analogy to dating, most hiring processes are like a Craigslist hookup and you want to build something like eHarmony. Is that what you have in mind? Can you build an eHarmonly-like backend that will look at both company and candidate profiles to make matches? Could be huge if it performs better than all the other systems out there trying to compete in that space.

yeah if you want to make that analogy. the hard part to explain though is the eharmony part is only well... a part of the idea. Because i realize that this has to be just more than a one-hit-wonder to make it worth coming back to.

i would more readily compare this to an eharmony + the amazon review system kind of dating... where we match you based on compatibility AND past people that have dated this person can warn you if they are a total creep/psycho.

The quest to build a workable job recruitment site, for anyone not just college students, is a lofty and most noble goal.

One of the seriously big problems with all job posting sites is that 90% of jobs are filled through personal connections. They never get posted, they never make the open market, they never get seen by anyone but the employer, employee, and a few people in the personal chain.

When I moved from Calgary to Vancouver I was totally hosed, I didn't know -ANYONE- in Vancouver. Finding work was a nightmare. Still is. All because I don't have a personal network out here. In Calgary I know lots of people, and where to go to meet more people and find work.

LinkedIN can be an awesome tool for keeping track of connections you have made, and contacting people in your secondary networks. But it still suffers from the core problem: if you don't KNOW anyone, you can't FIND jobs.

A tool that lets people network for the purpose of finding employees or employment, online, in an easy manner would be a great benefit. The hard part would be building meaningful relationships.

I love this concept, mccon104 :)

What micco mentions is true--you'd benefit from having having some sort of a matching application for the profile of a prospective candidate to the employer and vice versa. Not using keywords, mind you. I can completely relate to what you're saying. But perhaps predetermined options AIDED by keywords. More effective matching. This is especially useful because you'll have instant feedback/matches that you can browse through. Tag the ones you like, remove the ones you don't. Have the system learn what exactly you're looking for from corporate culture, dress code, management styles, workplace traditions etc. to 401k, benefits, fellow employees, hiring managers, etc. You're getting to the core of what makes a company a company and what makes an employee an employee.

I also see what daraddishman is saying: personal connections are key. But that's the beauty of something like this. You're building a network of professional contacts and meaningful relationships by giving a "resume", or in this case a profile, multiple dimensions. Instead of LinkedIn, Doostang, Zoodango, etc. where you add a contact and go, here, you get a good look at what they're like: who they are, what they're interested in (professionally speaking), what makes them tick (goals, ideas, projects, etc). On the other hand, if a friend knows a friend, it'll be a great feature to have for you and companies to see that connection (even if you didn't know it existed) and act on it. Say, you know Friend A and Friend A knows Friend B who just happens to work at Company C. A memo pops up to Friend A, B, and you and requests that Friend A make an intro. I know they have this on LinkedIn to an extent, but it'd be a way to work through the system.

I'll be rooting for you in next week's IdeaWarz!

im glad you mentioned that MAH... because there is planned to be a social networking aspect to this site. Due to the 1000 character limitations I really wasn't able to go into this. But the site will allow for students to make connections with peers, as well as business people. And it will allow business people to still create profiles, but instead of being out on their own they will be under the umbrella of their company. Another feature I plan to have is to allow you to recommend a job to a friend, for those cases where you find a job that you just know your friend would love.

@daraddishman - it is true that most jobs (about 49% according to recent surveys) are filled by internal referals. However I feel that in the case of college students, since we have less business contacts to get those referrals, most companies still have to rely on job postings and attending university career fairs. Unlike general job sites where the most attractive searcher is the "passive" user (passive because they already have jobs and it is assumed that the best talent already has work and may just be browsing to see what is availabe). Unlike that, most college students are what I would call "very active" searchers because we have a deadline, graduation, and we know we need a job by that deadline (student loans won't pay themselves after all).

@MAH - without getting too specific about the search methods (or if you want more specific just email me), there will be three separate options, completely adjustable and customizable. So the student will be able to create multiple different searches in at least 3 unique ways.

How can I make "I love interacting with people AND I am good with computers" a keyword?

Your key"words" could be:
"People's person " AND "Computer literacy"

You don't need a new site for that.

Linkedin can be (and in fact is being) used by students as well. You can start by connecting to other students and LIONS.

Experiences about compagnies is difficult because it's very subjective and often about persons and not the compagny itelf. There might be legal problems as well (slander).

@vandees - First off I'm not entirely sure I know what "LIONS" are, if you could help me out with that I might be able to better answer your question.

As for the keywords, I went to Monster to look up jobs with those keywords. I got the following jobs;
1) A clerical position in Harahan, LA
2) A job that required "5+ years experience in the multi-family industry"

That's it.

The fact of the matter is that many students simply don't know what they want to do after graduation. We will still offer the keyword/category search for those that want it, but we will also offer two other search methods for those unsure about what they want.

As for LinkedIn, less than 1% of students use it (compared to the 18.8% that use facebook or myspace). The main problem is connections, 4+ years in academia don't give you a whole lot of time to network with business people. You will be hard pressed to find many college sophomores who found their internship via a LinkedIn connection. Plus, LinkedIn is very limited unless the user pays ($20 - $200 a month) to use it, and college students just don't pay for stuff like that. We're broke!

Reviews about anything are bound to be subjective (perception is always subjective if you want to wax philosophical), its the nature of the beast. Amazon and other sites with a review feature have figured out ways to let users flag or "down mod" reviews that are not accurate representations, it's the same deal here.

4+ years in academia doesn't*

man i wish we could edit our own comments on here haha

Complete side note: mccon104, PM and I'll link to you on LinkedIN. Actually, anyone who wants to PM me and asks I'll be happy to link to.

I came out with a wicked network from 4+ years of academia...of course, most of them were connections in the fine arts... I still get all the coolest gallery invites! Mmmm.... free food....

Anyhow, I totally agree, the job searching online is absolutely terrible. The jobs that get listed are hard to find, they typically are posted by staffing agencies and not the companies you are trying to work for, and the application process is cumbersome. I typically look to Craigslist for work more than Monster or Workopolis.

I really do think you could do something interesting with this, building a better way to link employees and employers, especially people just entering the job market.

Another issue to consider, as you hinted, is experience level. Companies are competitively hiring people with the skills and experience. Entry level jobs are few and far between. College students are typically looking for entry level. I wonder if setting up an internship listing and the like would be beneficial as well? Dealing with the experience gap is going to be a hard nut to crack... almost as hard as the fact that jobs tend to go to personal connections, not to job posting sites...

@daraddishman - Yeah, it's no doubt tough to get a job with limited work experience but its an issue that hundreds of thousands of college seniors deal with every year.

For the record this site would be for post-graduation careers, internships and co-op opportunities for college students. So we would want to help the freshman college student looking for a summer internship just as much as the graduating senior looking for their first "real world" job.

And consider the PM sent

are you currently working on this site?! im curious, and must see it when completed. :) Great idea

well I am in the process of getting funding so i can get a working prototype... unfortunately i cannot code.

thats mainly why i brought the idea to this site, to either find funding to outsource the code or to hookup with a hacker who feels like co-founding this with me.

so to all those reading this, if this project interests you or you know a hacker that it might interest please send me a PM. I would love to hear from you.

Mccon, i have an idea about instant acceptance. For instance, When online resumes are posted employers tend to want to call up the previous employer. Why not have those previous employers post acceptances on your resume online so that the new employers wouldn't have to call them up. They will already see that the previous employer endorsed that information regarding your previous employment.

@Vancourerbluz - that is a great idea! haha i say that not in jest, but because i have planned for something very similar to that. So yeah I completely agree that the whole reference system can be greatly improved and I think you are on to a way to improve it.

If you need help learning some more about fund raising, and getting money to build a startup/project I would be happy to share info with you. Going into a startup you really do need every part of your team able to crank on the project. Since you don't code, you'll have to be the bizdev and mover and shaker, the person who manages the project and keeps things rolling.

I look forward to seeing what happens in voting with this one!

I would love getting some lessons on finding startup funding. You pretty much described exactly what I was planning on my role being. I don't mind dealing with the business work so long as I can find a highly competent hacker willing to work just as hard on the coding aspect.

Thanks tr everyone who has commented up to this point, its been great to both give a more detailed view of my vision and think over some questions I hadn't thought of before. Keep em coming.

Out of curiosity have you started any design documents or use case or feature list sheets?

That's probably the next step for you, to start nailing down initial features.

yeah i have the feature set (at least for the prototype) pretty much nailed down and have some very basic wireframes mocked up with a functional spec sheet.

i have wireframes for the front end (student and business user experience) but i don't know a thing about backend designs for websites, so i'm kinda stalled there.

Well, if you start a business with this one let me know and I will help you out with any advice and thoughts and commentary I can. Can you post the features list for everyone to look at?

There have been a lot of comments and I kinda skimmed through them, so if someone else addressed this issue alredy, I apologize and you can feel free to ignore me...

I am going to be getting my Economics Master's degree this spring and have spent the last three months trying to nail down a job. It seems that a lot of jobs are either entry-level, and don't fit a master's degree, or they require 5+ years of experience. If you could build a site that took care of this particular group of people, there's no way your site could fail. No way.

hmm thats an interesting addition Nick.

What kind of jobs will masters majors be looking for? How do we best attract those companies? And what are some of the needs that graduate students have that undergrads may not? (I'm sure there are plenty but since I'm an undergrad myself I don't really know)

http://www.collegegrad.com/
http://www.MonsterTRAK.com
http://www.aftercollege.com
http://www.collegecentral.com/
http://www.summerjobs.com/
http://www.campusinternships.com/
http://www.collegehelpers.com/

You've done a lot of thinking and received a lot of comments. These are all great signs.

You've done a lot of thinking and received a lot of comments. These are all great signs.

I think so too

@kevin_cox - thats exactly my point. Name ONE differentiating feature between those sites. And aside from audience focus, name one differentiating feature those sites have with Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com.

Now go back and re-read this idea and my comments. If you can't find at least five points of differentiation ask me and I'll post them. The point of this idea isn't to blaze a new trail, it's to greatly improve upon it.

@landsky and @vanhees - yes and yes, thank you I hope so.

* "reviews on companies they've worked for"
Been covered by other sites.

* "create business profiles"
Been covered by other sites.

* "companies to have their own profiles and job postings"
Been covered by other sites.

Where will the unique part kick in?

* "For companies there is no main college job board."
How do you propose to knock down competing job sites that all ready exist with a huge user base and have the money to do just about anything? How realistic do you think it is to beat major players in this market all ready with features you want in this idea all ready like hotjobs.yahoo.com monster.com?

@kevin_cox - ::sigh:: haha i was hoping for more constructive comments from you. You point out how most of these features have been created on other sites which i stated above is true. What you fail to either realize or do realize and just want to argue is that no one site offers 2 or more of these features AND is helpful to college students. If you want to debate on a point-by-point basis we can do that.

1) name the sites. how many people use them? what demographic are they going for? do they have any other features that draw people to the site or are they just a feature posing as a business?

2) yep there is one, LinkedIN. Now name one for college students.

3) yep, standout jobs and jobster are the ones. do they offer the previous 2 features? nope. Do they specifically help college students? Do they give the seeker any interaction with the site?

4) you're the kinda guy that would have told google not to try aren't you? or maybe mozilla, or dell, or facebook. I'm not competing directly with large job boards, I am competing with their side project college job boards.

This whole idea was born out of student frustration (not just mine) with the current job boards and online job search offerings.

* "Where will the unique part kick in?" *
By giving students what they want. Combining all of those features below (plus others you refused to mention) into one interface. By realizing that a graduating senior has completely different needs than a CPA with 4 years experience looking to move to Seattle.

I would love to discuss this more one-on-one with you so the comment board doesn't degrade into a bit by bit war over specifics. PM me if you are interested.

http://www.monster.com
Over 40,000 resumes uploaded every day. With more than 20 million visitors a year.
* "create business profiles"
You can do so by:
Mymonster>Myprofile (beta)
* "companies to have their own profiles and job postings"
Sort by > company or go to "Job & Industry Profiles"

*I am not sure if they offer reviews for each company on the site. I know they have general review advice.

*"plus others you refused to mention" Well I did not refuse to mention, I just forgot but here it is:
"The search method they use forces the student to boil down their passions and abilities into a couple of keywords."
Career-advice area and a rather large community.

"yep there is one, LinkedIN. Now name one for college students."
LinkedIN On there home page it says right there "Find people from your school" so I think they covered it.
OK, but thats still LinkedIN so lets toss in something new. What about myspace job search: http://jobs.myspace.com

The difference other ideas have over yours is research and bold new statements. You want to take on a very huge project that already exists and remake it with slight changes. The changes you want to make are no all that different from what a lot of others all ready offer.

Kevin: Oh my god, I can't BELIEVE you just used Monster.com as a debate point. I think you just used one of the least useful job listing sites on the internet to try and defend yourself! You could have at least used Craigslist!

I honestly think that monster uses an outdated model based on traditional recruiting services. The roots of most of the current generation of online recruitment sites are also based on this. You may as well call up Kelly Services, you get the same level of quality. In fact, better, since many of the jobs you find in online job sites are just reposts from staffing agencies.

Also, there is the problem from the person LOOKING for employees. Monster.com is insanely expensive. I mean insane. Most online job posting sites are. They are working in an outdated model that has just been pushed online. Online job sites have clarity issues, discovery issues, design issues...

This whole area is ripe for disruptive moves.

Now, is this idea going in that direction? I don't think so. Could it? Oh heavens yes... it just needs some refinement.

Jumping in on this one late but I am finding it interesting and it hits close to home. Coming out of college most job hiring sites are fairly useless. They are either outdated and swamped with terrible searching features or lack flexibility.

I know the most frustrating thing for me with online sites was jumping through hoops and trying to widdle down my skill sets and personal experiencing into a a few boxes. Monster is a perfect example of online job search hell. I couldn't even upload my resume because it wasn't a word document (no right minded design company would hire from a word template resume).

My input into what seems like a fairly well thought out site is to treat resumes and "profile pages" more like a unified portfolio. Make it possible to showcase work experience and generic resume criteria along side personal side projects and interests.

I'm not talking about list of favorite bands etc. but the ability to show potential employers that you are a human being that has succeeded in other endeavors that may not directly relate to the job but obviously display positive characteristics. Coming directly out of school you sometimes have had some great experiences but they generally don't translate very well into a keyword farm targeted at finding someone with the most work experience under strict guidelines.

Anyways, good luck with this one. I think there is a market for students but also an entire younger generation who is fed up with job sites that don't keep up with the rest of the web.

In asia pacific Jobstreet.com is a hit ... but doesn't need to put in statistics the demographic distribution.

I believe its bec the site serves well to the visitor's need, since majority are college graduate seldom you advertise a Job for non professional except the skill requires something particular say cooking, constructions job etc. but if you mean as college students per se most jobs available are traditionally advertise in print,such as Mcdonalds store crew-no need for networking there- but this is not to say College studes are marginalized, a lot of site are actually linking on major universities to prepare there graduating populace on the jungle out there.

Perhaps you are right, site you mentioned are outmodeled or simply not as effective as you want it to be..thus i guess you have valid reason to compete. Real job matching, virtual interview( ala second life) and shortlisting a candidate would be a good start.

Godspeed!

As I'm scrolling down the board here I'm seeing that everyone is getting further and further away from the idea.

So mccon correct me if I'm wrong here...

This site is

a.) designed for two very targeted groups of people
b.)free to those people because they are broke
c.)will use a complex series of algorithms to give very specific matches
d.)offers a social networking aspect to it for potential recruiters to be able to get a better feel for the prospective employee/intern
e.)is a trimmed down mash-up with unique features unto itself

and my own contribution f.) has a video feature so prospects can see what each other are like. Employers can post their questions and students can submit their answers in a video essay of sorts...

hmm...

I might be familiar with this idea ;-)

Monster, has been around since 1999. Yet, even that have most of the services mentioned in the idea. Greatened they may be rough around the corners but they are there. But, ya of course they follow the more traditional model.

But, they are still one of the best known services.

"upload my resume because it wasn't a word document" This is quite common in the work place as far as acceptable formats. The only other formats I think is typically commonly accepted by most company's would be PDF and plain text. I totally agree that word docs are a bad idea to use as a business exchange format. However, due to the fact that something like 80% of all documents in the corporate world are in .doc format. You are going to have to live with it.

Anyways, you want web 2.0 services for job seekers have a look:
http://www.jobster.com/
http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/
http://www.jobburner.com/
http://www.indeed.com/
http://www.simplyhired.com/
http://www.jobs.37signals.com/
http://www.climber.com/
http://www.indeed.com/

PS: Sorry for the spelling mistakes.

@Kevin_Cox

80% of the documents in the business world may be .doc but that is a poor excuse for ignoring standards and a large demographic of users. Having to hack apart a resume created in indesign that would normally be sent as a PDF is a great example of why monster has a horrible user experience.

I don't know Kevin, I've used Monster, Workopolis, JobShark since they came out, and I think they are terrible. The reason I think they are terrible is that they are functioning under a broken model.

Finding a job is about who you know, not what you know. Most of those web 2.0 sites are similar in approach, just using snapped up graphics and a bit of social networking for the fade effect.

It is a tricky nut to crack, largely finding work in today's economy is really about your social network and knowing how to leverage what you have done in the past, and what you know in a flexible and new environment. As someone looking for work, it is hard to find the type of work that one needs to build out your experience on these sites.

In terms of an employer looking for people, there isn't anything valuable on most of these sites. When I'm staffing up the first thing I do is ask my social network if they know anyone with the skillset or personality that I'm looking for, 70% of the jobs that pop up get filled through that. The other 30% I post through craigslist. 1) because it is free. 2) because it attracts people with the right kind of problem solving and thinking skills.

So it's a one-two punch for me when it comes to these online staffing sites. I don't have any social network verification of the person I'm looking to recruit, and that means a longer hiring period ( and often training ) which costs me money and time. At least on Craigslist I am not paying for the service, and attracting the numbers of people to get some results, and they are typically some form of technorati.

I honestly have no problem with emerging students, I have had good and bad experiences with them. Most of the students I have hired have come out of my extended social network: parents, friends, boyfriends/girlfriends of people I know. That sort of thing. As someone who has to employ people, and do contracts, I would totally be into a site where I could find out more about a potential emerging employee through social metrics and social networking.

@kevin_cox - do you have anything constructive to add? do you have any improvements? what should change what should stay the same?

your comments have been only negative adding nothing to this idea. do you have a purpose for commenting or do you just want to drag an idea in the dirt? it looks to me like you only want to argue why this is a terrible idea, yet everyone else thinks it has promise and those that don't like it at least have something to offer. what are you offering?

i can get negativity anywhere, i brought the idea to CH to get constructive advice and criticism... not to filter out trolls.

if you can't see an opportunity in any market (regardless of how small) i have to question your entrepreneurial spirit.

@roguestartv - haha now that you mention it yeah it matches up with your idea a lot more than i thought. you should be hearing from me today or tomorrow.

thanks again.

".doc but that is a poor excuse for ignoring standards."
I agree with you as I stated before in my post: "I totally agree that word docs are a bad idea to use as a business exchange format."-Myself

"do you have any improvements? what should change what should stay the same?"
What you need is specific targeting that can be scalable. Take FaceBook for example they did not start out trying to take over the world of MySpace they took over a single university then used that model to scale up.

There also, needs to be some more differentiating features. What you have to do if find all the things that are annoying, problems, and not there for users in the current system. Then chart off some things you can improve with the least amount of work load needed.

@kevin_cox - "what you need is specific targeting...."
I have never once even mentioned my distribution and marketing plans. Suffice it to say that I'm not going to just open the site up and expect people to join. I have a very specific initial target (both of students and businesses) and I have very specific ways to market to them.

Differentiating Features:

-read/write reviews
-match yourself to companies a la eharmony style
-create professional (as opposed to social) network profile
-show different sides of yourself with our multifaceted profiles
-complete privacy control
-add peers/business contacts to your network
-organize your contacts into a hierarchy
-business and job profiles are all standardized (us = facebook, monster = myspace... at least with profile creation)
-get reminders, tips and application status instantly (no more uncertainty)

and that's just the student's differentiating features, there are even more for the business experience... so now I ask again... what do you think?

Side note: Recommendations on linkedin are awesome, is that what you are refering to when you talk about reviews?

@daraddishman - the reviews are allowing students that have previously worked for companies (via internship, co-op, w/e) to rate their experience with the company. (its a lot more complicated than that but thats the short version ha)

recommendations are part of the social networking aspect and yes there's a comparable feature.

Ah, cool, thanks for clearing that up. That is a good point, some companies have absolutely terrible internship programs, so that would be good information for students to have.

Just college students is a very big market. This project needs focus on a specific group or type of students.

The project seems exponentially big as far as features that need to be built. Perhaps you could use one of the "Create your own Social Network" CMS systems. This would slim things down a lot.

In my opinion this project needs to be boiled down to key features that are not going to take up so much time to build or can use existing APIs and systems.

@kevin_cox - hahaha you can't have it both ways man. you complain about a lack of a differentiating feature set, then when you get it you complain that they are "exponentially big".

To respond to your "I don't know what I want" needs I just want to point out that I have not mentioned which features are going to be part of the alpha. I have just listed my grand-scheme view. There is a boiled down list, but no need to jump the shark until we get a big enough want by the users to begin creating the alpha here. I imagine this to be an agile product however, so admittedly some of the grand-scheme features may not make the final cut.

And like i said before, I do have a plan for distributing/marketing this initially to a specific group of students, but thats another one of those specifics that I don't care to share with all ATM.

For Clarification: "big enough want by the users" is in reference to CH users wanting to create the site, not me waiting for a bunch of college students demanding I make this (which would be cool, but is about as unrealistic as it gets).

"a lack of a differentiating feature set, then when you get it you complain that they are "exponentially big" I was saying the workload to build them is exponentially big.

Look, the features you are proposing are hard to make. It takes a lot of time to make the stuff that you are proposing.

To me you sound just like the people that want to make a massive game: "Hay, lets make a true 3d mmorpg just like world of witchcraft, but with change it so all of the characters are going to have top hats."

You still a lack in differentiating features from other sites. Like in the mmorpg example saying everyone will switch just for the ability to where top hats is absurd.

You have identified a few problems.
Here is what you need for a good solution:
* Smaller workload for building the site
* Smaller and more specific target audience
* Unique features not just slightly modified versions of existing ones.
* Has Scalability

If you don't have this stuff it will fail. Right now I don't think you do.

@kevin - haha I'll just chalk you up as someone whose mind will never change. Just outta curiosity what completely unique features did the following companies bring:

1) Wikipedia (see: any other encyclopedia)
2) Facebook (see: myspace, friendster)
3) Google Search (see: yahoo, alta vista)
4) Flickr (see: webshots)
5) Flip Cameras (see: any video camera)
6) Skype (see: Vocaltec, Level 3)
7) Hotmail (see: AOL, Netscape)

See the problem you run into when you lump "improvement" in with "slight modification" is you force yourself to reinvent the wheel every time.

wow almost forgot my favorite example.

8) ipod (creative zen, 100+ others at the time)

We had spoken about this idea on the phone and as I said you've got a tough market here. Lots of competition and a very complex tool to build but the personal connections through some sort of social interface could be what sets the site apart from others.

When I hear social networks I instantly think "not another one" but with something like this with an end goal of getting a job I feel better about it.

With the right viral tools placed that college kids use such as Facebook apps and what not you could have something on your hands here.

The ideas I like are...

* Rating companies
* Rating Internships
* System for determining if you are "right"

Honestly it will be complex but many employers (MOSH included) already use software that asks questions to make sure someone is "right" for the job. Those could be adapted to go both ways I would imagine.

Making money off the site is something I'd obviously need to know more about but I think with some tweaking this could be something college kids would use.

Check out:
http://www.studentgems.com/
Cheers
Tommy

Sorry, I forgot to say: this one is UK based.
T

@rayrayangel - yeah I need to send you my executive summary for this so you get a better idea of what this idea is really about. It could just be that I am terrible at explaining it haha.

@vanhees - I say this with all sincerity: you are actually the first person to show me a related website that I had not seen before. So thank you. After looking it over the site has its targeting right and also allows students to create profiles but I'm a little confused as to what it offers past that, or how a student would find a job using the site. Admittedly I only spent 5 minutes on the site (it's getting late and my brain hurts haha).

"haha I'll just chalk you up as someone whose mind will never change."
I am willing to change, but only when there is a problem with my logic and way of thinking

1) Wikipedia (see: any other encyclopedia)
Version control, gap filling, research potential, updated regularly. You can't find stuff like this in other encyclopedia's since there is simply not enough resources to cover everything. Personally I use both wiki and encyclopedia.
2) Facebook (see: myspace, friendster)
Standardization, 3rd party developers, control over networking.
3) Google Search (see: yahoo, alta vista)
Do I even need to point this one out?
Better algorithm for searching, better interface, less ads, more direct with users, simple high performance functional layout, etc...
4) Flickr (see: webshots)
Both are popular, flicker is more about management controls. So, depends on what you want to do.
5) Flip Cameras (see: any video camera)
Simplicity, point and shoot. People that don't understand technology very well don't like having something complex.
6) Skype (see: Vocaltec, Level 3)
Skype has a public use in mind. While the others have corporate interface. They don't share the same market, they are geared on completely different levels.
7) Hotmail (see: AOL, Netscape)
Was one of the first to the marketplace. You have to remember at the time most email was very ISP based. That and name branding. Although, now is more about brand then anything.

Kevin I think you miss the point. For example regarding Google versus Yahoo or Alta Vista, Google didn't bring anything groundbreakingly new to the table as far as user features were concerned. They provided search just like those other guys. They just did it better with a cleaner interface. Yes they were incredibly innovative, but all that was on the back end hidden from the user. From the user's perspective, they were just another player with the same features to offer except they did it all a little better.

mccon104's point seems to be that you can be successful doing the same thing other companies are already doing if you do it better. You don't have to have some groundbreaking differentiator (though it certainly helps) as long as you can provide an altogether better user experience.

"incredibly innovative, but all that was on the back end hidden from the user."
Are you for real? That a look at Google's home page compared to all of the others. It is completely different from all of the other pages at the time. All of the other search company's had a flood of content and ads on their homepage, Google had search bar and like 6 or 7 links and a logo. Which meant there page would load fast. Maybe nowadays, with cable and DSL you have forgot about how dial-up speed was like. That was a big deal having a fast loading page.

When you searched on other sites they would often mix in lots of ads with the content and put ads all over the site. With Google they keep ads to a minimum and only allowed text ads that they made clear to the user was not part of the search. Google had a totally different front end look and back-end functionality compared to all of the other sites.

I like google's minimalist layout very much, but I use them because their search results are better. That's back-end stuff. They could have a circa 96 clownpants layout and I'd still use them because their tech is better. YMMV, but when I use a search engine, I care about results.