Facebook, now a $100 billion company, became hugely popular with normal people first, and then the coastal tech elite.

Pinterest is currently following the same pattern, though mostly among women. It is the second fastest growing Web site ever.

What trait do Facebook and Pinterest have in common that other entrepreneurs could copy?

Both take an analog, off-line activity people were already doing before their product existed – before the Internet existed, actually – and made it 1,000X easier and more fun to do.

People have been sharing photos with each other since photography was invented.

But prior to the Internet, sharing photos was pain.  People actually used to pay extra to get duplicate copies of their photos so they could put these photos in envelopes and then mail them around the world.

The important thing to remember is that even though this was a pain but that people were doing it anyway.

Then the Internet came, and sharing photos got a little easier, but it was still time-consuming and frustrating.

To send a photo from your digital camera, you had to upload the photos and attach them to a single email and email them out to everyone you wanted to see them. Sending the photo took forever. Downloading it on the other end took forever.

But again, even though it was a pain, people were doing it anyway.

Now, with Facebook, you just upload a photo to one place, tag it, and everyone in the photo is notified immediately.

Photo envelope

Josh Oakes

Remember ordering doubles?

Likewise, Pinterest takes something lots of women have been doing since their youth – clipping out pictures from magazines and putting them in collages – and makes it 1,000X easier. No more scissors. No more glue. A world of images to use instead of just the ones in the magazines laying around.

Start asking this question about Web businesses: Do they take something we were already addicted to doing and make it easier and more fun?

You'll start to see a pattern that explains why some companies are a success and others are struggling.

Here are some companies that take something we already did and use the Internet to make it 1,000X easier: Amazon (shopping), Instagram (photography), Zynga (board games), Groupon (coupon-clipping), Dropbox (floppy-disk file transfers), Spotify (listening to music). The number one app in the world right now is Draw Something, and its an online-version of Pictionary.

Here are some companies that expect users to learn how and why to do a new thing: Twitter (tell everyone what you are thinking and reading all the time), Foursquare (make a game out of telling everyone where you are), Turntable.fm (???).

Which group of companies are scaling better? Which have a better chance to gain traction with normal people?

Obviously it's the first.

That doesn't mean entrepreneurs shouldn't try companies that fit into the second group – a lot of innovation happens there – but they should know that the failure rate is going to be much higher.
