How do you act on all that product feedback?
gabrielweinberg.com
gabrielweinberg.com
When I built delicious there were literally hundreds of competitors, many starting as literal clones. Because they didn't understand the reasoning, they couldn't make the same decisions that I could.
However, sometimes you have to ignore some requests (big or small) if they aren't in line with what you want the product to eventually be.
One last thought is pivoting - which only select companies have managed to pull off - and have profited incredibly (Flickr, Groupon, PayPal). While it's not necessarily on topic, it's important to listen to user feedback and look for potential in every single idea (no matter how silly they might be).
It's kind of like a high pass filter for feedback, with a very cheap implementation cost ;)
Obviously this tip won't suit everyone all of the time so don't flame me. I thought it was an interesting idea though. It's a really good book, btw; some good advice and stories if you are building freemium web apps.