

What I Learned About Building Apps - feint
http://feint.me/articles/5-important-things-i-learned-about-building-apps

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dpcan
I found that, FOR ME, the most commonly requested feature only affects my
lowest common denominator of users.

It seems that the most requested feature on my primary app is a very "social"
feature, meaning only the most "social" people were requesting it.

A competitor came out that STARTED with the social feature and it appears that
very few people use it.

Not that the feature is off the table, but I didn't let users determine what
goes to the top of the list. I've learned which features create more
customers, and I'm sticking with that for now.

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nhangen
What I learned in building my app was how many different ways people used my
app. I found that once I asked why they wanted certain features and learned a
bit about their usage behavior, I could more clearly ascertain whether this
was a smart idea or an aberration.

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zzzmarcus
An interesting counter-example is Goodreads.com. The number of features on the
site is amazing, and consistently growing.

At a first glance it seems to be a fairly basic site for book reviews, but the
deeper you dig you find a full fledged used-book exchange, quizzes, lists,
comparison shopping, profiles, trivia, quotes, videos, short stories, etc.

I'm not sure how they manage to keep it all under control or how they decide
which features will be useful, but they do a great job with keeping users
engaged in multiple activities on the site, no feature seems neglected or
empty.

