The cost of being everything to everyone Feb 19 2010
10 comments Latest by Jake
As long as we’re doubling up, Marco Ament is chiming in at the comment thread of yesterday’s “shoot themselves in the foot” post with some more great thoughts.
Success, as measured by installed base or revenue, doesn’t strongly corrolate to quality. A lot of mediocre products are extremely successful, and a lot of extremely successful products are mediocre.
I can’t argue that Microsoft Word or Firefox haven’t been successful, and I won’t argue that they don’t deserve their success. They both try to be everything to everyone, and they’ve largely achieved that, hence their success.
But, like most independent or small developers, I have neither the resources nor the desire to be everything to everyone, and I don’t like the experience of using most products that were designed in that way. Being everything to everyone incurs huge costs in complexity, reliability, and efficiency that I can’t afford, that I can’t tolerate in products I use, and that can’t result in a product I can be proud of.
Later on he explains why he feels comments are a net loss for the vast majority of comment-enabled blogs.
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10 comments so far
Alan 19 Feb 10
The irony of doing that in a blog comment, recognizing it and justifying it with “this is different”: priceless ;)
The Firefox and Word examples btw are pretty bad. Yes, he is the sole developer of Instapaper and therefore programs it how he uses it. Unfortunately he has no idea how people in France are going to use it or in China or in Brazil, and if it works at all for them. Yes, he doesn’t care: great solution. But apparently not a good enough solution for any browser developer.
J 19 Feb 10
I disagree that comments are a net loss. Take this post for example, which is based on a discussion in previous comments from another post.
Sure, most comment systems are littered with garbage. But at the same time, no one is forcing anyone to read the comments.
There are smart ways to manage comment systems that can result in open discussion and new insights. Without comments, the possibility of any meaningful discussion is effectively none.
Alan 19 Feb 10
And one other thing regarding only implementing what he uses himself: Because he speaks English, he sees no value in localizing his product into French, so everybody is supposed to learn English or just no use the product? And that is supposed to be a good thing?
G.Irish 19 Feb 10
The tone and quality of comments on any site depend on the audience, the site’s subject matter, and the quality of the content. If your site is for teenagers you’re going to get juvenile posts. If you have a political blog you are bound to have flame wars erupt from time to time (or maybe all the time). If you post poorly-researched opinion pieces people will tear viciously at thine hindquarters. The nature and content of your site dictates the type of comments you’re usually going to get.
Sure, there is always going to be the occasional troll. And one absolutely has to have some sort of anti-spam meaures. But comments certainly are not a net-loss in all cases.
Jimmy Chan 19 Feb 10
@Matt
Firefox bad? What browser do you see as a good one?
Anonymous Coward 20 Feb 10
“A lot of mediocre products are extremely successful, and a lot of extremely successful products are mediocre.”
“The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.” (xkcd)
I think that’s a very arrogant thing to say. You can say that some of the technology Office uses isn’t as good as possible, or that you don’t like it, but it’s obviously an extremely good product, because people buy it in droves.
Do not argue with results. Rather, try to understand what makes those products so popular.
Ricky 20 Feb 10
Jimmy Chan, I agree with you Firefox so far is the best free browser available with max compatibility, reliability and tons of extensions. If talking about alternatives: may be Opera and Chrome?
Berserk 20 Feb 10
@Jimmy:
It’s Marco, not Matt, who feels that Firefox is mediocre. That’s what the quotation marks are for.
Henry Phan 21 Feb 10
Alan,
Firefox has developers from around the world. It’s much easier and cheaper to support localization when your developers already speak the languages.
Don’t forget that Marco’s working on Instapaper by himself- he’s the designer, the developer, and the tester all in one.
He can spend time improving the quality and usefulness for his English-speaking customers, or he can spend time learning new languages. He can easily comprehend the feedback he gets, or he can struggle to understand what his customers are saying.
It’s not that there’s no value in localization, just that there’s (currently) more value elsewhere.
Anonymous,
This isn’t a tautology.
Think of it in terms of a Venn diagram: there are extremely successful products, and there are mediocre products. The sentence you quoted refers to the overlap- products that are both mediocre and extremely successful.
Remember, “good” is a moving target. If you’re measuring quality by the number of units sold, then yes, Office is good. But if you’re measuring by simplicity and intuitiveness, Office might not be the best.
Different strokes for different folks.
Jake 22 Feb 10
@ Henry Phan
He doesn’t have to do the translations himself. All he has to do is restructure the application so that others can easily translate it to their own language.
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