Reminder to HN: Think "how will this software get my users laid?" | Hacker News Reader

Reminder to HN: Think "how will this software get my users laid?"

jwz.org

49 pointsYuriNiyazov28 comments

This is old advice, users now know how to use the internet to get laid. The next trick: How can they make their crazy exes stop finding them when the internet is forever?

There is more than one human biological drive. The behaviors driven by evolutionarily prompted tendencies to reproduce are well-liked behaviors, on which one can build a profitable business model, but even celibate people have to eat and sleep. A product that reliably brings about a good night's sleep (either before or after sex) would still be a killer product, even if if had no direct effect on the user's love life.

But as jwz notes, nobody actually wants checking a checkbox to be approved by multiple committees. It sounds like a good idea when you're writing the spec (what if a dumb employee checks a checkbox he shouldn't!!!!111!!!), but no real person fantasizes about having this sort of feature available in software.

In reality, people check things that affect them even if there is no explicit approval flow. "Why did you order that extra monitor" at budget time is a lot less work that having 6 bosses sign a form every time someone needs a pencil. Not on paper, but in real life.

I fully agree. The problem is that these kinds of systems are generally pushed by IT and upper management in large companies. That's where the money is. And they don't really have a grasp how things work in the lower echelons, they must have some twisted idea that employees get more productive by clicking checkboxes and workflow buttons all day.

I think the real attraction to upper management is blame management. Job security probably motivates the obsession with checkboxes, etc. more than any desire to see the lower echelons more productive.

This is a very insightful piece considering it's from 6 years ago.

"Social software" is about making it easy for people to do other things that make them happy: meeting, communicating, and hooking up.

Wow, thats basically a Facebook manifesto, albeit 6 months after TheFacebook was launched (but when it was still very small and relatively unknown).

Pretty insightful stuff from JWZ.

Facebook has replaced Evite, but it really doesn't do calendaring in any meaningful way. JWZ seems to be talking about software that make serendipitous real-life interaction easier and better; Facebook seems to mostly have the effect of isolating people all day, replacing parties and Monopoly for wall posts and Cityville. There's still a lot of room to improve.

There are plenty of successful enterprise software providers and there always will be. It really depends on the expertise of the founding team. The product just has to make sense. Some companies stop at the point when the purchase decision make likes the product and stops innovating (or they call move towards scaling, i.e. devote all resources to sales), and that's when they lose their edge.

> The product just has to make sense.

Or have a really really really good marketing team, and be really really really hard to migrate away from.

Lock in enough people, and you're a success!

>Lock in enough people, and you're a success!

The credo of all proprietary software companies.

You must work for Oracle, the best sales & marketing organization in the world.

That's true, but Jaime's point it that it's _spectacularly_ unlikely to get written as "open source".

How many times have you heard people with big plans to "re-implement Microsoft exchange as an open source project"? I think someone I know somehow ends up involved with one of these plans every couple of years, and that's held constant for at least 10 or 12 years, with universally half-arsed execution. They all end up building the bit Jamie proposes (easily sharable group calendars with email/IM/website integration), but _nobody_ ever implements the "Managers" half of what Exchange does, because nobody writing open source software has that itch to scratch.

It's not 100% cast iron guaranteed, but the observation that "enterprise software" gets written by people on salaries in cubicles, and "open source software" gets written by people who don't have to wear suits to work - is so overwhelmingly often correct that we can use any of the very few counterexamples as "the exceptions that prove the rule".

Note too, that "founding teams" are not "typical open source developers", I think a small startup with a great plan and some enthusiastic early-adopter corporate customers is most probably who'll take down the MS Exchange market monopoly... (If they can crack the market before Google does)

I think you also missed the point of the message. It's more that, if what you want to write (given the state of the world at the time) was some software to help people organise their lives, then you have to hit it from a social angle.

People don't want to use Excel and Sharepoint and Outlook, we only do it because we have to. No one would use a piece of non-work software if the use case was 'Create a schedule of events you plan to attend.'

but make the use cases: "Track what your friends are doing." "Meet new people." "Let people know what you're up to."

You are aiming for the things that people might want from the software.

Facebook didn't invent social software (AOL was in the business of helping an earlier nerdy generation hook up), they just (at first) made it exclusive.

(But now my 60 y/o aunt from Ohio -- literally -- is on Facebook. So much for that ...)

Ohio is a big place. There are even cool people here.

Why-Oh-Why-Oh-Why-Oh? ;)

... I would happily move back (I have a Cleveland birth cert and I lived in Cinci for a while). Sorry to be a flip coastal snob ...

The exclusivity was simply a means to an end; Facebook's strength was that it had a route to becoming the first social software that all your real life friendship group used. And it let you know in a nice indirect way who was going to which party, and by extension whether you had much chance of getting laid.

Actually MSN messenger probably had all my friends on it first, but their profiles were sadly neglected and their non-time sensitive messaging and invitation system was Hotmail.

As for the old folks, I worry more when I hear my octogenerian grandpa mention icanhascheezburger!

" ... and I came back here and told the other guys what you had said, and they were all, `Oh, fuck. He's right.'"

I suspect JWZ hears that quite often...

"My software will realize huge cost savings for your company, resulting in a huge bonus for you and a very happy wife at home".

... pitch in progress

> Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?

Awesome, I think I've done this. My software lets the student pay to sit with a girl he likes at dinner, anonymously.

I posted a link, but have removed it so as not to hijack the more general point of the thread.

I liked the movie, but it seemed to cut off suddenly before it was quite finished. I also wished there was a way to make it fullscreen.

Oh! I think it's because I'm using the 'chromeless' YouTube player, not very usable. Double click for full screen, single click for play and pause. I'll fix that, thanks for the heads up.

Since you've removed the link, I can only speculate: you direct a mob of people to occupy all other seats in the restaurant except for the one across from her?

I am disheartened by my lone attitude in this but I really love this idea. This a awesome way to think about developing software or really any product. This is an amazing mindset to have. How will my product, service, or software make my consumer more of a bad ass? I love it

I'm helping one startup currently that in some way can help with this. Not directly/explicitly, but close.

Get them made, paid, or laid, that is.

> 15-Feb-2005 (tue); 8:21 PM

This should really have (2005) in the title.

I guess I'm in trouble. My software does the opposite of helping people get laid. It's related to anime.

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