Can you create a company based on another company’s weakness?

From a Lifehacker article, I discovered Micromobs, a website that provides private group messaging service. Their usability design is very similar to Facebook Group where you can post something (a picture, pithy comment, etc.) and have your friends comment on them. The overall web design takes the “best of” Facebook and Twitter features, including trending topic and 2-column display.

You may ask: Why would  anybody use this instead of Facebook or Twitter? To quote the Lifehacker article:

Micromobs is designed to offer easy to control and scalable social networking without the openness of other social networks. The emphasis on group-specific communication and networking means your family reunion planning, paintball team musings, or workplace joking doesn’t end up plastered all over Facebook.

Privacy has been a hot topic with Facebook. I frequently see updates from strangers in my Facebook news stream, just because my friends comment on them. And when I click on the stranger’s profile I can then see their photos and other items which they probably don’t intend for the public to see.

So I can see the value of having a more private community where you can share and discuss things without worry. But do you really want to start a company based on Facebook’s weakness? I personally don’t and here’s why:

1. When it comes to privacy, it’s not like Facebook has their head in the sand. They know people are calling for better privacy control and I bet Facebook will come up with a palatable solution for most people. Facebook has millions of dollars in resources.
2. I won’t get any personal satisfaction from taking a feature of another website and calling it my own. I just don’t see enough differentiation between Facebook Group and Micromobs right now — not in design or user experience.

I’m not saying getting inspiration from other companies is bad — Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed all copy features from one another. You can in fact bluntly copy another company’s whole business model and move it to another location (see the many Groupon clones for example). I just think that if you want to create your own company, at least try to make it stand out. What do you think?