For the past couple of months, I’ve been keeping pretty up to date with technology blogs and journals, particularly in light of the endless buzz that’s been generated on tablets and smartphones. One thing that’s been really bugging me though is the persistent use of the word “killer” (e.g. iPad-killer, Facebook-killer, Kindle-killer, iPhone-killer, Blackberry-killer, and so on). I’m considering two reasons for this idiocy. The first possibility is that these bloggers aren’t really idiots, but are part of the sensationalist journalism that seems to be the norm these days. If that’s the case, then it’s really a shame because it’s a cheap way to get an audience. The second possibility is that these bloggers really are idiots, and that they have no conception of business or marketing basics.

The term “monopoly” gets thrown out a lot, but it’s often misused because true monopolies almost never exist. The nature of a market depends, among many things, features such as product differentiation and barriers to entry/exit. Markets are also not static, so a company can try to define a market in its own way and, if it’s powerful and successful enough, it can get away with it. For example, a regular watch and a Rolex are both watches but they’re not exactly in the same market and it would be misleading to analyze them as such. Some companies aim at making premium versions of a product and get away with charging a premium as well, largely because they have managed to define their product to fit their market.

Product differentiation is basically the ability for companies to differentiate their products from the competition in a meaningful way (that consumers care about). So, in the case of smartphones, there is clear differentiation between the products that Apple, HTC, Nokia, Motorola, and RIM makes and it is not likely that any of these companies will ever create a product so powerful and superior that it literally kills off the competition. It’d be lucky if it moves the market by a few percentage points.

In addition, some people are likely to own multiple kinds of the same product or service. Social networks are a good example. Whatever Google is concocting for its social network, it is more likely that people will sign up for it while keeping an active Facebook account, because what’s powerful about Facebook is not the unique services it provides, but the network effect it has. That is, the more people use it (i.e. the more friends you have on Facebook), the more powerful and useful it is to its users. Google is not likely going to get 500 million users anytime soon, and it’s not going to be killing Facebook in the near future.

I suppose this “killer” attitude is a way to get readers exciting about something that fundamentally isn’t very important in the grand schemes of things. Admittedly, even I was somewhat caught up in the rhetoric, even though I wasn’t buying any of their analysis. But many other readers are, to the point of being blind to facts and sales figures and (good) market analyzes. Tech bloggers are not likely to stop using “killer” anytime soon ‘cause it generates conversation (and blog posts) but it’d be nice if more of them can take the time to do actual thought analysis instead of getting themselves and their readers swept away by what corporations want them to think.