The wait for the next big breakout hit in Silicon Valley might take longer than you think

[Commentary] There is something very interesting going on in the Internet industry right now. The biggest companies -- especially Facebook and Twitter -- have done a remarkably good job of holding on to market share despite the threat posed by a constant stream of new innovators -- such as Instagram, Vine, Snapchat and now Periscope. In short, it’s getting harder and harder to find the next big breakout hit in Silicon Valley that can topple one of the market leaders.

That’s actually more significant than it sounds, because it flies in the face of the traditional Silicon Valley narratives of “disruptive innovation” and “creative destruction.” Big companies are not dying off, being replaced by others. The Web, which has been proclaimed dead over and over again, has not died. Instead, the giants of the Internet world seem to be doing a remarkably good job of staying ahead. Arguably, as M.G. Siegler of Google Ventures has pointed out, the most interesting thing about Facebook right now is not the social network, but everything built on top of it -- Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus. The same is true for Twitter -- the six-second Vine videos and livestreams from Periscope are now more interesting than the deluge of daily tweets. The reason for this ability of the industry giants to hold out against the innovative start-ups might be that Silicon Valley has finally matured as an industry, and what we are witnessing right now is what we’d expect from any industry once it reaches its maturation phase. You get a few big winners and the most interesting upstarts are either acquired or bought up by the winners -- or they are simply innovated out of business.

[Dominic Basulto is a futurist and blogger based in New York City]