Who are these ‘people’ and why are you interested in sharing your idea? Assuming you have crossed I-have-an-idea stage and have committed yourself to build a prototype I can see four sharing case: a)Usability testing with Grandma. b)Feasibility testi…

I agree with you. I think it makes far more sense to tell people what you are up to as this inevitably makes it easier to get advice (good and bad!), funding and business contacts who can end up helping you along.

The other thing I would say is that there is a good chance you are not inventing anything “unique” per-say. It is more likely to be a new way of doing things. (yes – there are exceptions). For this reason, people won’t try an copy you because it’s already being done and they won’t know your approach until after you launch your thing.
Thanks for sharing.
Best regards
Barney

It’s kind of like telling someone that you’re going to quit smoking, drinking, etc. The more people that know about it, the more likely you’ll follow through and do it.

I have an idea years ago, and now it has became a business plan, I shall share my plan instead of original idea right?

I’ve designed a pattern to extract a user’s preference from posts in my social networking site, then I shall share this to others. But, if an idea is not worth much, why companies such as facebook applying patents for design?

I not only told everyone that would listen about an idea I had over the summer. I blogged about, commented about, and eventually bumped into a fellow web programming who loved the idea and ran with it (Tyler Gillies).

For all the reasons above, and for the most important I highly suggest all would be entrepreneurs share their startup concept with whoever will listen.

Finding cofounders is a biggy, and because 99.9% of the effort will come in refining the concept into a product or service. The idea has value, but the implementation and design model you follow (customer feedback loop) is where the traction will come from.

At this point I know I have helped to construct a tool that I find fascinating and with great potential. But it’s ultimately users who will determine if the market is ready for social media driven two way search and advertising.

Then again, there’s a difference between publishing a description of the idea on your website and simply announcing a name and perhaps a tag line.