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  • Stuck in the past

    This was originally posted on my old, defunct Tumblr

    My earlier observation that technology companies too often don’t appreciate the needs of normals is hardly groundbreaking. What is less intuitive is how often geeks are the ones stuck in the past.

    During a recent discussion about the future of the PC, a friend posited that the PC as we know it wasn’t going anywhere soon – after all, netbooks and upcoming Internet-only devices don’t play games, for example.

    So let’s consider games. Here are the top 10 PC games of all-time (via Wikipedia):

    1. The Sims (16 million)
    2. The Sims 2 (13 million)
    3. StarCraft (11 million)
    4. Half-Life (9.3 million)
    5. Half-Life 2 (6.5 million)
    6. Myst (6 million)
    7. The Sims 3 (5.9 million)
    8. SimCity 3000 (5 million)
    9. Doom (5 million)
    10. Riven (4.5 million)

    Right off the bat, you can see that casual games – aka games played by normals – have a significant presence on the list. But that’s not even my point – the reality is that these numbers are tiny, at least in comparison to a game like Farmville.

    The number of players? 22 million.

    A day.

    It may be controversial, even radical, to say that the PC as we know it is dead, especially to a geek. He can list off any number of things he can only do on his computer. Edit photos, use a fully-featured spreadsheet application, and even little things like a real email client. Those aren’t random examples – they’re applications I use every day. But that doesn’t mean my wife does. Or my mom. Or the 22 million farmers on Facebook. It’s to the geek’s peril that their affinity for and ability to use fully-featured desktop applications obscure the fact that the normals have moved on.

    UPDATE: A fantastic article about Normals and iPhone apps:

    The people who are consuming software now are a vast superset of the people who used to do so. At one time, especially on the Mac, we’d see people chose software based upon how well it suited their requirements to get a job done. This new generation of software consumers isn’t like that – they’re less likely to shop around for something rather they shop around for anything. These are people who want to be entertained as much as they want to have their requirements met. They’ve not bought into a tool they’ve bought, either financially or emotionally, into The Future. The Future is never about the most practical and useful outcome, it’s about flying cars and cute robots who shit talk but will still mix you up a killer G’n’T when you need it. The Future isn’t a service that’ll send you a text message when you’ve been out too late on a work night, The Future will get you laid on a Tuesday and make excuses to the boss the next morning.

    How did applications that make farting noises or make you sound like T-Pain do so well on the App Store? The answer is simple – they made people laugh.

    That should have been the first sign that the software market was changing. It’s obvious in retrospect; people were buying software that would make them laugh. This runs counter to the common understanding of an Application. An Application represents the developer’s best effort at creating software that applies the capabilities of the device to solving a specific problem. Making people laugh is not a problem an Application can solve; it’s not about the device it’s about the person using it.

    It’s worth noting a lot of geeks hate the app store, not just because of Apple’s policies, but because of the kind of apps that proliferate. The article actually addresses that too, quite elegantly. Go read it.

  • Dropbox and the Entrepreneur’s Blindspot

    This was originally posted on my old, defunct Tumblr

    I love Dropbox. Seriously, it may be my most essential app/service. When I save a document, it’s backed up instantly. No matter what happens, I will always have access to that file from any computer. I can even sync it to a second computer if I happen to have another. Of course most people don’t have two computers, but everyone is interested in protecting their files.

    So why is Dropbox so focused on sync?

    Dropbox’s homepage consists of little more than a video. The opening analogy, of a magic bag, is fine, but the kicker is 20 seconds in.

    “The same thing is true for computers. If you have more than one…”

    BAM! Dropbox just lost 90% of potential users. In fact, It’s not until the 1:36 mark that the video reveals Dropbox’s most marketable feature:

    “He can still get to his files on the website, where they’re always backed up.”

    Just about everyone who has worked with computers for any length of time has lost files. It sucks, and Dropbox fixes it. It even fixes corrupt files, or unintentional changes, as you always have access to previous versions.1 But instead the video, website, everything prattle on and on about sync.2

    Why?

    I needed [Dropbox] badly. I worked on multiple desktops and a laptop, and could never remember to keep my USB drive with me. I was drowning in email attachments trying to share files for my previous startup.

    That is Dropbox founder Jon Ying, explaining what was his inspiration for Dropbox. And here’s the thing – he has achieved his goal. Dropbox is an amazingly elegant solution for sync (and, to be clear, the company is doing very well for itself). But I don’t think Dropbox is doing as well as it could, because, as currently presented, it is not perceived as meeting the needs of the “normals.” And that’s where the money is.

    Ultimately, this isn’t a post about Dropbox. I’m certainly not bagging on the company – I love the product3, and by all accounts, the crew that works there is equally awesome. Rather, it’s about an all-to-common flaw that strikes even the most brilliant entrepreneurs: once you’ve developed a product that meets your needs – and many products start out this way – how do you market it to a population that is not like you at all? Dropbox has a product that is extremely appealing to the “normals,” but the current Dropbox message is tailor-made for the geeks.

    And so it goes for all too many tech companies. Amazing technology is followed by lots of funding and backslapping in Silicon Valley, and far too few “normals” from the rest of world.

    More later on what it takes to fill that gap, and why most traditional marketing types don’t cut it.

    1. The number of old versions of a file is limited in the free service, but still useful ↩

    2. Make no mistake – sync is hard, and Dropbox does it better than anyone. At my last employer I built an entire update system across six locations and 30 classrooms using Dropbox, but I know I’m definitely in the minority. ↩

    3. I pay for the Pro 50 plan ↩