Hitting the mainstream market
It was something that Robin mentioned that got me thinking about this blog post.
"If your idea is technology for technologists it probably won’t go anywhere. Go find a real problem that real people have and solve that. Move away from the computer - socialise with the 99.99% of people who haven’t heard and don’t want to hear about Flickr, Twitter or RSS."
I agree with him 100%. Here's the thing, there are so many applications which are tailored for the same small niche of geeks out there. It's not until something is tailored to the mass market of technophobes out there that things truly do explode. Take Bebo as an example, it's easy to use, horrible to look at and people out there just love it. I can't explain it, the whole thing just seems voyeuristic to me, but yet I still have a profile there because all of my non-techie friends have one too. I'm not saying that website is a socially responsible one, or even that it is solving a real world problem, but it is so easy to use that even the most non-techies out there can just use it.
While out at CrunchLudd a few weeks ago I managed to bump into Daniel Becker of GlowDay. Although much of that night is a bit of a haze from the free bar available (Thanks Anton and dotMobi) I do remember quite clearly much of our discussions about developing a beta app for a new startup. The main drive from him was to keep things unbelievably simple, if people need to do things with 4 or 5 clicks, then it just won't be done. Why not have them do it in 1 click? Anyhow the anagram KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!) is now firmly engraved in my head. Focus on one simple thing that would be popular with users, thats the aim.
Lately I have been thinking about developing applications my family would perhaps like and use, (3 sisters), I've been looking into various area that they would generally be interested in, fashion, travel and music having figured highly in my thoughts lately. Are these things interesting from a technological standpoint? Probably not, but at least my family might use the app, thats all that matters in my mind. Once they can just get the idea with minimal explanation, then that's where success begins. When ever I look at sci-fi TV shows, I always see everyone adapting to their environment, using cool gizmos and gadgets.
Our environment is always changing with new technology coming out every day, there are always early adopters to this technology, at this stage it is considered niche and techy but for some reason a breakthrough is made. It's when your technology hits the mainstream, when your family are using it, when your friends are using it, when your friends technophobe granny is using it, thats when you know you have suceeded.
I've been seeing hundreds of Twitter clones the past few months, with the new Apple application store coming online this week we are going to be inundated with thousands of geo-location applications coming on stream too. Are these applications socially responsible? No! Are developing them fun? Hell yeah. Most of the developers of these applications are designing these platforms for their own tech friends, not for the mainstream use. We only need look at Twitter for an example of such an application, it was only once it became popular that issues cropped up with it's architecture every other day. Discussing the ins and outs of twitter is beyond the scope of this post which has become something other than what I expected but what the hell...publish!
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