

Please Build Me Something Useful: A Letter To Web 2.0 Developers - rchambers
http://www.businesspundit.com/50226711/please_build_me_something_useful_a_letter_to_web_20_developers.php
 have a confession to make. I have tried out hundreds of Web 2.0 applications, and there is one and only one that I use almost every day. You see, the problem with Web 2.0 is that I'm not a social person.
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antirez
I agree 100% with the article.

Many applications are not designed at all to be useful, because in the last
months the market didn't rewarded __just __useful applications, but a lot of
fashionable ones.

Sometimes to build something of really useful is much harder than to build
something like twitter, but it's like there is no longer a connection between
how well a tool will solve a long time problem and how much buzz, users, money
it will get.

Add to this the fact that web 2.0 users tend to be the same set of users using
all the services, and trying a lot of new ones: it's ridicolous the number of
people that are just happy to add a new website to the list of websites they
already use everyday.

Instead to look for web apps solving problems many users are looking for
problems that the just-released-web-app can solve. Instead to focus on writing
interesting articles for their blogs this users will spend all the day
visiting analytics, feedburner, sending messages in twitter about new
services, reading tons of RSS, ...

Fortunately there is a parallel web 2.0 market of valuable things that save
our time and make our life better. Developers seeking for a real business in
the last years should look at this.

It is also very important to try to improve over the useful things already
released. To make a better flickr or a better delicious or a better reddit can
be ways more interesting than to invent something of totally useless just to
be new and original.

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garbowza
I understand his point, but I think he supports it poorly. Of course a product
that has 1 review is not likely to benefit greatly from that single review.
But when I buy a product, or book a hotel, I look at dozens of reviews from
other people and I get a good sense of the pros and cons of what I might buy.
I can then gauge those perspectives against what is important to me. And I
find that overall they are almost all correct -- in aggregate.

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tx
The point he's making is that the process of aggregating still takes alot of
time. The guy simply wants to live his life and spend less time in front of
the computer. In that regard this new wave of Web 2.0 is not solving anyone's
problems. Online reviews have been around forever, he is aking us to build
something new, better, something more useful, in a sense that it won't take
you a day of research to buy a new camera, for instance.

Speaking of reviews, I also agree with him that "wisdom of crowds" is
overrated. Movie reviews are an excellent example: crowds generally have no
freakin taste. Similarly, crowds do not know jack in photography, computers or
politics. Dig deep and long enough and you will _always_ disagree with the
crowds.

In fact, when someone is unable to conduct his own judgement, asking for the
opinion of others is the _easiest thing to do_ ,

In that regard Web is 100% focused on helping you with the easiest thing. "Not
that helpful" he argues, and I agree.

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Jd
100% agree with you. However, one can frequently assess the quality of any
given review by the quality of the prose it is written in. This is especially
true for Amazon, IMHO.

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tx
This must be (by far) the most interesting and unusual piece of text I've ever
seen on ycombinator.

~~~
Alex3917
Agreed. Reminds me of a rule of thumb I have. That is, any sentence starting
with 'I think' involves no thinking.

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trekker7
It seems like the author would find traditional, client-based applications
more useful than server-side Web applications. The whole point of the latter
is to use everyone's data to make software more useful, and if he doesn't care
about everyone else's input, there's no need to connect to the Web.

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brianmckenzie
He's missing the point. User reviews are as much about the reviewer as they
are about the object of the review. All the same it's important to remember
that there are _many_ people like this guy.

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adnam
I hear that The Wisdom of Crowds has good reviews...

