On "groupware" being bad Aug22 '07
A recent quote here went like this:
A new application should have me yearning to return to it, like a mother to her child, or an alcoholic to the bottle.
This is absolutely true in all realms of software development and deployment.
A link on Daring Fireball yesterday provides more evidence on my own theory:
If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.
This quote comes from this essay on the subject of "groupware". I couldn't help but be inspired by much of the essay.
When words like "groupware" and "enterprise" start getting tossed around, you're doing the latter.
The "latter," meaning: creating software that managers want to buy.
With that kind of motivation, nobody will ever find it sexy. It won't make anyone happy.
... with a groupware product, nobody would ever work on it unless they were getting paid to, because it's just fundamentally not interesting to individuals.
And the most standout quote that is now ingrained in my head:
So I said, narrow the focus. Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid? "How will this software get my users laid" should be on the minds of anyone writing social software (and these days, almost all software is social software).
As the essay says, it's kind of crude, but also insightful.
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