Why I Made This Site.
There's a moral to this site that might not be immediately obvious. That moral is:
Plenty of things that suck, don't have to.
I realised this truth when Google released Gmail. Up until then, webmail had sucked in several ways. For me the two biggest points of suckage were the interface, and what you got for free (from memory, Hotmail gave you 2Mb of storage).
Now, there were a few other things that happened to allow Google to make a great interface and give everyone a free 1Gb of mail storage, but the very first thing that had to happen was someone at Google had to say: "Geez, web-based email sucks in so many ways. What the hell were those guys thinking?"
It's surprising how well making a task not suck can predict the success of a product.
Before Google, you used AltaVista to search the web, and to find anything you had to refine your search fifty times over (often by adding stuff like "not including the word sex" to your search).
After Google, you entered a search term and got what you wanted.
Before iPod, you had all your digital music on your computer, and had to frick about loading up your portable player with the songs you think you might like to listen to today.
After iPod, you store your entire music collection on your player, and don't need to mess about with cables every morning.
Before Google Maps, online maps were shown in a tiny window surrounded by ads, and seeing what was just off screen meant a 10 second page reload.
After Google Maps, you have a big window and you just move the map til you're looking at what you want.
I guess the thing stopping lots of companies from bringing out a product that doesn't suck (and therefore becoming dominant in their market) is that it's hard for a corporation to realise that their current product sucks.
That's really the reason I started this site. I think it's our responsibility, as consumers, to clearly state when something sucks; it's rare that a company can realise it on their own.
And this leads me to the inspiration for this post. A reader sent me this link:
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/05/i_like_companie.html
..where Steve Rubel points out that the Yahoo 360 team is having one of those moments where someone realises that something about the product sucks.
That's step 1, Yahoo. Congratulations, you're one step ahead of MySpace.
Plenty of things that suck, don't have to.
I realised this truth when Google released Gmail. Up until then, webmail had sucked in several ways. For me the two biggest points of suckage were the interface, and what you got for free (from memory, Hotmail gave you 2Mb of storage).
Now, there were a few other things that happened to allow Google to make a great interface and give everyone a free 1Gb of mail storage, but the very first thing that had to happen was someone at Google had to say: "Geez, web-based email sucks in so many ways. What the hell were those guys thinking?"
It's surprising how well making a task not suck can predict the success of a product.
Before Google, you used AltaVista to search the web, and to find anything you had to refine your search fifty times over (often by adding stuff like "not including the word sex" to your search).
After Google, you entered a search term and got what you wanted.
Before iPod, you had all your digital music on your computer, and had to frick about loading up your portable player with the songs you think you might like to listen to today.
After iPod, you store your entire music collection on your player, and don't need to mess about with cables every morning.
Before Google Maps, online maps were shown in a tiny window surrounded by ads, and seeing what was just off screen meant a 10 second page reload.
After Google Maps, you have a big window and you just move the map til you're looking at what you want.
I guess the thing stopping lots of companies from bringing out a product that doesn't suck (and therefore becoming dominant in their market) is that it's hard for a corporation to realise that their current product sucks.
That's really the reason I started this site. I think it's our responsibility, as consumers, to clearly state when something sucks; it's rare that a company can realise it on their own.
And this leads me to the inspiration for this post. A reader sent me this link:
http://www.micropersuasion.com
..where Steve Rubel points out that the Yahoo 360 team is having one of those moments where someone realises that something about the product sucks.
That's step 1, Yahoo. Congratulations, you're one step ahead of MySpace.
posted by Daniel at 9:33 am
3 Comments:
So all the folks at google now have anal cancer from all the smoke you're blowin up there arses on that one! Not that your point isn't valid! Keep on truckin.
Things that suck. People who start three blogs and update none of them. Guess who?
...it's hard for a corporation to realise that their current product sucks.
Hard to realize? Try impossible ... to start with, the current product had to be ~somewhat good~ at some point in the past to generate enough coin to keep the company alive: companies don't have products that suck forever because someone, something innovates around them. Inside the corporation, any association with the current product results in the developers of that product getting forced up the mgmt food chain into "young turks, next good ol boy, can-do-no wrong" status ... if you cross that crowd to say that emporeror ain't wearing clothes and he ain't one that looks good naked] ... you will be ostracized as a whiner, a loose cannon, a square peg in a round hole (i.e. "you don't fit in so you should move on..." ) The product keeps sucking until it is so bad that somebody buys the company CANS EVERYONE and "restores customer confidence in the once great brand."
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