Fiat Lux

Over at Mobile Opportunity today, Michael Mace makes a point that’s true not just for technology products, but for virtually any kind of product development:

Very often tech companies will fall in love with a concept that is compelling to people in the company, but not to non-technologists. They’ll convince themselves that people will want it because, well, they ought to want it.

A related problem: A company will come up with a product that’s nice, but doesn’t really address [a pain point]. You know you have this problem when someone in the company says that need a marketing campaign to explain to people why they should want the product. The really good products need marketing for visibility, not persuasion.

I think this is the underlying problem behind most failed web applications. They do something interesting, as opposed to something compelling.

What makes this whole problem especially tough is that you can’t just ask customers what they need.

Emphasis added.

I’ll add the caveat that the line between visibility and persuasion is not cut-and-dried. Look at the advertising for the iPhone. Most of the spots are product demonstrations. Clearly, you’re raising visibility by showing what the product can do, but isn’t that also a form of persuasion?

And as always, one person’s “eh, interesting” is another person’s “OMG must have now!” But even so, the point is valid.

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Yesterday, a friend of ours e-mailed a link to a video of her new kitchen. I decided to send her back a video of our own kitchen. So I shot a quick video, uploaded it to YouTube, and sent out the link.

Then the weird thing happened. About 30 minutes after I uploaded the video, it disappeared off my YouTube account. Poof. Gone. No notice, no nothing. I have no idea why. The video is about 45 seconds of me talking as I walk through my kitchen; I didn’t add any music or graphics or do any editing at all, so there’s no possible copyright issues.

I don’t upload stuff to YouTube very often so maybe this is normal and I just don’t know it. Or maybe I’m the victim of some unfortunate glitch. Either way, it’s a little annoying.

At any rate, I signed up for a Vimeo account and re-uploaded the video there. If you’re really curious, you can see it (but I warn you, it’s kind of boring):

UPDATE 8:30PM: And now it’s back on YouTube. Go figure.

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A few initial thoughts on the proposed Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo that was announced today:

Microsoft is a software company whose track record in content and advertising is not so hot. Yahoo still has some fantastic content, both internal and user-created, and they’ve by and large been able to monetize well, but Yahoo is too big, too slow, and lacks a clear vision of their path forward. Their stock is way down and they’re an acquisition target. Microsoft has the resources to make the acquisition and on paper, it looks like a good matchup (although neither of them has done well in the search area). Still, I don’t think it’s going to turn out well for them in the end.

Why? Simple. Yahoo’s problems will not be solved by the people who took five years to bring us that POS that is Vista.

I expect that the deal will go through sooner or later, and then the integration will be long and ugly. The Yahoo! brand may or may not survive; Microsoft has managed to keep their branding off of XBox but I wonder whether they’ll be able to resist rebranding Yahoo. And certainly some core Yahoo properties will get Borged into Microsoft; I don’t expect YIM, Yahoo Mail, and maybe even My Yahoo itself to survive intact. Some of the spin I’m seeing is that Microsoft is looking to Yahoo to add some social expertise to their current mix; which would imply that Flickr will probably make the cut, as well as del.icio.us and hopefully some of the the other acquisitions like MyBlogLog or Upcoming as well. No matter how you slice it, though, this is going to cost a lot of Yahoos their jobs.

Eventually, you’ll have one homogenized behemoth that still won’t be able to beat Google at search. Whether it will still be able to provide quality (and monetized) content that people find useful — we’ll see.

Superbowl Sunday update: Google weighs in, and they’re not happy.

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I don’t actually have a MySpace account, but this post on Bloggasm made me smile on an otherwise gloomy day. For those of you who are on MySpace, it’s time to get with the program:

If you’re reading this and you’ve experienced any of the things on the list below, your account may be in need of deletion:

1. You rarely log in to Myspace except to delete spam friend requests from nude webcam girls.

2. You spend five minutes writing a wall post only to hit an error message when you try to post it because of all the website glitches.

3. You’re a girl who constantly gets marriage proposals from random men in the middle east.

4. You visit someone’s Myspace profile only to suddenly have music start blasting out of your speakers. Bonus points if it happens to you while you’re at work.

5. You have to make redundant clicks to perform simple tasks because Myspace keeps taking you to advertisement pages where you have to click on “return to myspace profile” in order to continue what you’re doing.

6. You visit someone’s profile only to have your eyes bleed because of terrible page layout with non-matching designs and font colors.

7. Your experience is hindered because of intrusive banner ads that either talk to you or try to reach out and block your view of what you’re trying to look at.

8. You read yet another news account about how some child predator using Myspace has abducted a little girl or that some hoax Myspace account has caused a teenager to commit suicide.

9. You’re frustrated with the fact that Myspace doesn’t allow you to post your contact info, meaning to contact someone you can only use Myspace’s glitchy Instant Messenger, message/email system, or wall commenting.

10. You’re tired of seeing Tom stare out at you from millions of friends lists and just wish he would change his f*cking profile picture.

Have any of these things happened to you? Well you’re the perfect candidate for Myspace deletion. Join me on Wednesday, January 30th by deleting your Myspace account. You won’t regret it!

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I wasn’t going to blog about the Gizmodo / CES thing, but a conversation I had today made me realize how strongly I feel about what they did, so I’m going to add my voice to the chorus.

What the Gizmodo guys did wasn’t just puerile, it was mean and flat-out wrong. The fact their their boss Nick Denton seems to think it’s all good so long as the pageviews keep rolling is just as bad.

Those people in the CES booths are human beings trying to do a job and they should be treated with basic respect. If you think their shtick is stupid or their product is lame, fine. Feel free to say so. But when you decide you’re going to screw around with their stuff just because you can, you’re way, way over the line, and you’re no better than a schoolyard bully.

There once was a young girl who came home from school one day with grapefruit-sized bruises on her legs, because a couple of boys decided that kicking the crap out of her was “fun”. The bruises went away eventually, but the memories of fear and humiliation linger a long, long time.

Bottom line: It’s not funny, and if you think it is, you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask yourself what kind of person you really are.

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One thing I have been pondering lately is whether I should be doing something more than just blogging. There’s podcasting, and video blogging, and I haven’t tried those at all (with the exception of one very short video clip I did of Scott making ravioli). I’m not on Utterz or Seesmic or any of the other “cool” new content creation sites. I’m just a blogger. Sometimes I worry a little — am I getting left behind? Am I turning into some dinosaur of the Internet because I’m still just typing away?

But there’s a reason why I don’t do that stuff, and it’s not for lack of time, software, or equipment. It’s because they do not add any value to what I’m doing here.

My long-ago college major was in Drama. One of the things you learn when you study theater is that everything you do on stage should serve the purpose of the production. If you do it, say it, wear it, or hang it on the wall of the set — it all needs to be there to augment the essence of what you’re trying to communicate. That essence will change, of course. Your vision for presenting Phantom of the Opera is going to be different than your vision for Othello. But no matter what you’re doing, you need to constantly ask yourself, “Is this serving the goal I am trying to achieve?” And if the answer is “no” then DON’T DO IT.

As John Whiteside points out today,

Video has its place. Video can show you things that would be hard to follow in a written description; the video that Apple put on its site as a promo for the iPhone is a great example (it convinced me to buy one because it made it obvious how many features worked, and it served as a quick start guide when I got the phone home). I’m not saying video is bad.

I’m just suggesting that if you can’t figure out why you shouldn’t be using a simpler, lower-bandwidth, more flexible, and more user-controlled medium for your message, then you shouldn’t be making a video.

I couldn’t agree more.

People have a complete right to be self-indulgent, and to experiment with new mediums of communication. It’s a great way to learn to use technology. The next stage is to learn how to use those tools to do something that people will actually get value out of watching. I hope we get there soon.

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I’ve been following the whole Scoble / Facebook blogstorm today. As one of Scoble’s “Facebook 5000″ I have to say, I’m a little miffed that he felt entitled to scrape all his contacts’ personal data out of Facebook and drop it into Plaxo.

It gets to the nature of our connection and what exactly “friending” means between people who don’t have a pre-existing offline relationship. I wouldn’t care if one of my real-life friends decided to grab my email address out of Facebook and put it into their Outlook address book, for example. So why am I annoyed that Scoble did it? Because 1) he’s not a real life friend and 2) he didn’t ask first.

Seems to me it’s time to remind folks that, just as in the real world:

Don’t take more than you’re given. And if you’re not sure what the line is, ask first.

If you give your next-door neighbor a set of keys to your home, that doesn’t give them the right to walk in unannounced any time they feel like it. They still need to ask your permission. So too in the online world. Just because someone ‘friends’ you online does not give you an unlimited right to do as you like with their contact information. Yes, it’s annoying to have to manually re-friend people if you move from one social application to another, but it’s the polite - and the right - thing to do.

Allen Stern seems to feel the same way. And of course, Loren Feldman’s take on things is blunt and touches on another troubling aspect to this — why was Scoble doing Plaxo’s testing for them?

UPDATE: The inimitable Lisa B over at Bruce Clay did a much better job of getting the point across than I did.

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Those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember Netscape’s birth will feel a little sad to hear that it’s finally reached the end of the line:

AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reigns fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.

I first downloaded a copy of Netscape some time in 1995. What a long, strange trip it’s been since then.

At least we still have Firefox.

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Of all the feedback that’s hit the Internet today about the new Google ‘knols’, I haven’t seen much comment about this aspect yet, but to me it’s one of the most problematic parts of the whole idea:

Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

Unless Google puts some sort of gate-keeping into the process, they just opened the door to a cacophony of competing knols on high-value search phrases and highly contentious topics. Imagine the chaos when every pill-pusher on the Internet creates their own knol on various medical terms and conditions, for example, or when there are competing knols on highly-charged topics like abortion or the state of Israel. And as Jeremiah pointed out, I expect that SEO/SEM companies are already thinking about how they could sell knol creation services to their customers.

Even without the massive can of worms that is the conflict of interest issue here (although I think Tony is spot-on in his take in that aspect), I think this has the potential to be very, very ugly.

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We buy our DSL connectivity from a small local provider that we’ve been doing business with for years. We could pay a little less and go with one of the big companies, but when you read stories like this, you might understand why we’re happy with the status quo:

Canada’s largest provider of high-speed internet access is exploring a controversial data substitution technique that lets it add its own content to the webpages customers visit.

[snip]

This is what Net Neutrality is about — it’s not just making sure that data is handled in a competitive and non-discriminatory manner, but it’s also that the data that’s sent is the data that you get — that the content is unmodified, not with messages that are woven into your data stream.

UPDATE: Lauren Weinstein has an interesting solution to the problem: kiss http goodbye.

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