Please Build Me Something Useful: A Letter To Web 2.0 Developers | Hacker News Reader

Please Build Me Something Useful: A Letter To Web 2.0 Developers

businesspundit.com

29 pointsrchambers11 comments

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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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.

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.

I agree, when I purchase something I look at what other people have complained about. If enough people complain about a particular problem, then I'll evaluate if I think it would bother me.

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.

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.

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

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

My take on the article is that what he needs/wants is a web 2.0 application that would save him time, like a business productivity app.

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.

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.

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

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