“I picked out seven recent extremely popular websites. While perhaps not having the mindshare of a “Basecamp” or a “Ning”, these websites do have the benefit of having tons of actual users. Here they are, ranked roughly in order of popularity:”
- MySpace
- Wikipedia (basically tied)
- Flickr (pronounced flick-her)
- Digg
- Del.icio.us (pronounced dell-dot-icky-oh-dot-you-ess)
- Google Maps (no popularity data available but I bet it’s pretty popular)
“I looked at all these websites to see what they have in common. Here’s what I discovered.”
- Be Ugly
- Don’t Have Features
- Let Users Do Your Job
- Ignore Standards
- Build to Flip
Hmmm, seems like Five Habits of Seven Successful Web Sites, but some entertaining observations inside.
Music: Dr.Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band :: Sour & Sweet
You see — users really *don’t* want features! We just want a place to scrawl our stuff.
Here’s my pitch for the ultimate Web 2.0 app: it’s a completely blank white page, with a monospaced font logo at the top. Users can type, draw, scribble, or upload anything they want on that page. Add an RSS feed, and wait for Yahoo to come knocking! I call it “Suck.r“.
Dylan, I think you and mneptok are on the same page.
Wow, that’s pretty Zen! I kept waiting for something to happen. Then I realized that I was seeing all kinds of things on the page, in my imagination: My daughter’s face. What I had for breakfast. A beautiful summer day. Al Gore as president. Amazing! How did mneptok manage to get that brain-Web interface going like that?
I don’t think Flickr is by any stretch ugly, nor light on features…etc. The poster bracketed his major (singular) insight with two examples of nonsense on either vertical side; The one overarching theme that is the quintessence of the non-thing we call Web 2.0 is let the users do the work. By doing that, you create users that do something more than just use — thus it is easier to hook them on the junk your peddling and make a buck, because they believe in what you have: they created it.
Nate, he actually does give a nod to Flickr as not being ugly later in the article.
Why is “Web 2.0″ a non-thing? Seems like you described the “thing” of it pretty well :)
That is one of the undisclosed habits: Don’t follow through on your promises.
Why is “Web 2.0″ a non-thing?
Because it ate itself.