hypothetically speaking

(Before I start, I'd like to say that I think I may need my own thread for questions, cause I have a gazillion of them, lol)

So yea, hypothetically speaking.....

IF one of these dolphin sites made it in the top 100 websites, then what?  Can someone please help me see what would be the point of then having your own dolphin site? This question popped in my head when I read the "congrats on 100,000" sites/members thread, and before I read that, when I first logged back on after many months, I realized that there is now 200,000 members here.

I came here looking for something UNIQUE and DIFFERENT from the other software out there, which had a very low profile.  Dolphin was looking like its the answer.  I cant really imagine anybody wanting to use a clone of facebook for their own site, because facebook is facebook.

2) This is a spin off of the orig question.  But lets say boonex gets 5 million members (or more because nobody will turn down money), and all of those ppl have numerous sites, then what would make dolphin so unique and different then, other than a few mods and its appearance/template? Granted its almost 7 billion ppl on earth, but still.

I think that MY PROBLEM is trying to understand how would dolphin be beneficial (at least for my purposes, which is having something unique, rare) I guess the easiest way I can explain it is like this.....Diamonds are very rare which gives it most of its value.  Pebbles are every where, probably tracked a few into the house from coming from outside, which has no where near the value that diamonds have.  And if diamonds were pretty much available every where, its value would decrease, because its not rare, which made it more special than other rocks to begin with.

Im just really curious about how many licenses have been sold, or at least an approx number of dolphin sites.

 The success rate for any site, let alone a Dolphin site is small, only because most people either do not have the money to sustain the time period required to reach a "successful" point, or do not have a proper plan and purpose in building their site to begin with. This can happen to any site, regardless of the platform you use.

It is not Dolphin or Wordpress or BuddyPress that makes you successful, it is you, your site content, your niche market, your members, your marketing etc etc. Not everyone will succeed because it takes "something" to make it happen, and if you are not willing to put in the effort, time and at least some money, then you will be one of the statistics.

The analogy I will give is like MLM, I think there are many MLM businesses that have a great product and a sound system, but of the thousand people who join any MLM scheme fail because they do not follow the system or put no effort whatsoever. Most of these people think that by investing a thousand or two thousand dollars success is owed to them. Just because you paid a company your $500 to join and be part of their MLM marketing system, you are assured of success. Not so my friend, it will still require a lot of effort, time, money and sacrifice to make it happen.

Like life there are no guarantees, but try you must and sincerely in order to give you the best chance of success. It may even take you three or more tries before you can hit on a niche community that will work for you. You do not need Dolphin, more like you need a great idea to use Dolphin to your advantage. 

Good Luck! I hope I made some sense.

presscon, that is a nice philosophical comment, but it is another "blame the users" point of view that is prevalent here.  I think the "success rate" is FAR too small here - I have seen too many failures here from people with all sorts of different skill sets - excellent developers, marketers, system integrator,.business experts - and there are only a handful of successful sites.   Go to any other open source site and you will see hundreds or even thousands of successful site - many small, but still successful.  There is something about the Dolphin software that seriously lacks engagement, and the company often seems reluctant to incorporate community solutions as happens with other open source systems.  I am not saying the users here are blameless - it takes more than just software to make these things work, but in my opinion that is the central issue that should be addressed here.  

presscon: thanks for your view point and you did make sense.  I understand exactly what you mean, just because a person buys a scatch-off doesnt mean that they will win anything. Gotcha!!!  Guess I will sit around and wait for more answers or thoughts to those particular questions

caltrade: "something about dolphin that seriously lacks engagement"

lol, no there isnt..............it seriously engages bots/crawlers from china & so on fairly well.

On a serious note though, I do believe dolphin has great potential, I say that because having great software along with great ideas will be MY keys to success.  I wouldnt want to waste my ideas on a crappy software.  Now if  Boonex can just crank out some updates pretty fast, and that fixes some of the most vital features, then half the battle will be won.  (Again boonex, thanks for the hard work you guys have put in) Plus dolphin is easy on the eyes.

What Im noticing is that majority of the people here....wait, thats a different topic for a different day, to be continued...

I would like to say if i may that people want something like facebook(maybe they are used to it). "Showing the site big." Suppose facebook showing a block on homepage with the latest users blogs, about 2 million maybe . Doesn't sound good. Ohhh wait where is the fb homepage? I am not saying remove all blocks and probably dolphin can't work like that either. Cuz everything is just blocks..blocks..blocks. Just think like a noob user :P