

No One Wants Your Crappy Web App - csbartus
http://www.leveragingideas.com/2009/07/20/no-one-wants-your-crappy-web-app/

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devin
I am feeling extra cynical at the moment so I can't hold myself back:

All of this talk about "follow your passion, the money will come" is starting
to sound a little infomercial-ish. It's also a little ironic considering that
this guy says in his talk that we should all go out and follow our passion.
What if my passion is building an aggregator that aggregates aggregators?
There's clearly more going on in the background than people are letting on. I
know plenty of people who followed their passion and filed for bankruptcy. I
know web 2.0 is over and we need a web 3.0 mantra, but please, let's avoid
this crap about how the web is all about fluffy clouds and passion that
deliver piles of money for attempting to save starving babies. A little
perspective please.

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
Very true. Follow your passion...and you'll love what you do. There's no
guarantee of financial success or even financial subsistence.

Sometimes you have to do things for money. The key is to find the right
balance between pure passion and pure commercial interest. It exists, and
working in that space is a great place to be.

~~~
devin
Well said!

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csbartus
And so your current users are:

\- hipsters

\- web celebs

\- real celebs

\- alpha geeks

\- wow fanboys

instead of:

\- freedom fighters

\- kids & puppies

\- slum dogs

\- old people

Sounds funny ... until you'll watch Mike Wesch's latest presentation at
Democracy Forum about the users of the web2
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=709900>)

I think this change of the user base is backing up ideas and trends like the
freemium business model.

~~~
davi
Good link, thanks.

 _I think this change of the user base is backing up ideas and trends like the
freemium business model._ \-- So what are you saying the link is between
Wesch's talk and freemium?

~~~
csbartus
Wesch talks in the same way about the changing user base: the web became the
home of usual people instead of the elite.

They take the web differently from the old users: for them everything is for
free and for fun that's why you can't really charge.

------
there
and what uncrappy web apps has this guy made?

according to his twitter page he has a company that is "a digital word of
mouth agency", "a social technology builder", "a social media marketing
practitioner", "an experimental marketing producer", "a content creation
machine", and "an idea foundry"

so he doesn't really make anything, he just markets what other people make?

~~~
sophacles
I don't need to be a chef to know someone's cooking sucks. I don't need to a
writer to know hack writing. Why does this guy need to be a programmer to know
crappy webapps? Further why does his marketing mean that he can't have
observed and lived the "do what you love and the rest will follow" message he
presents?

~~~
jpwagner
You may not need to be a chef to know someone's cooking sucks, but you sure as
hell better be a chef if you're going to lecture to a bunch of chefs about
cooking.

~~~
sophacles
I call bs. Sure, the chef needs to go listen to other chefs about cooking,
technique, ingredients, whatever. But I bet that same chef can go to non-chefs
about things like book keeping, marketing, what customers want, etc. Further,
plenty of restaurant owners, restaurant workers, restaurant enthusiasts and/or
people who eat can totally get up in front of a chef and say: hey stop making
crappy food no one wants it. Or even "this food that you are all making used
to be trendy and clever, but now that everyone is doing it, its just sucky and
boring. Here is something cool instead".

Bringing the analogy back around, it is pretty arrogant for developers to
think that the only person that can speak about the end product is another
developer. Sure, I wouldn't listen to a marketer about what framework to use,
but I sure would when it comes to declaring aggregators old-hat and sucky.

~~~
sophacles
Can someone explain to me why this comment was modded to -1?

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patio11
Underserved demographics? Hmm. Well:

Women.

Old people. i.e. those above the age of 30

People who do not like using computers.

People who are not Americans.

People who do not read English.

(You could make a VERY long list if you included underserved demographics
which did not also have huge purchasing power, but in terms of business
models, I'd rather be targeting 40 year old American women with graduate
degrees and household income in the $80k+ region than illiterate folks in
Africa whose most reliable web access is a shared cellphone.)

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omouse
You can tell this is shit when you see a link to Umair Haque's work. The guy's
a marketing twit who uses large words in a bid to mislead people into thinking
he's saying something revolutionary. All talk, no walk and it's a surprise to
see him linked to when this is all about "do better walking, not just crappy
web app walking".

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rabidsnail
I have no idea what people who are not like me want. Maybe I could go and live
in a favela or a township for five years and maybe then I would know, but I'm
probably not going to do that. If I attempt to serve an imaginary favela-
dweller I'll end up with a product that doesn't suit them. At least I know I
can serve myself.

------
mbenjaminsmith
People with something valuable to say generally don't yell.

It reminds me of that Mr Show where they were playing ad execs and almost gave
their client a heart attack by insulting him and yelling. Now that we have
your attention...

~~~
devin
Yeah the guy is truly obnoxious. Too "slick" to be taken seriously.

