Thoughts about internet software design - the best idea wins

It's very interesting - the web 2.0 hype.Wikipedia did what no one else in the world believed was possible. They created a collaborative work of literature about every topic under the sun... with a process of allowing any person of the public to delete pages, vandalize pages, add to pages, change pages, utterly throw out and redo pages. People do this at will and in real time. People still, to this day, don't understand why or how it works... and mainstream media pontiffs are always trying to give them advice with the idea that wikipedia will change and do things more according to what is deemed to be common sense.

Now... wikipedia's software is freely given away and hundreds or thousands of other varieties of wiki software are created. Wikis are sprouting up everywhere on the net, now. People who copy the exact process which wikipedia uses, usually do quite well for themselves; or they could if they applied themselves to their project. In actuality, most wikis fail because of lack of wisdom about social engineering.

Then along comes web 2.0 - a massive group of computer software designers decide that they are going to do what wikipedia did, but better. Each of these people has one of a thousand different ideas for projects which involve content created by the public. Some ideas are more practical and easily put into motion than others. Everything seems to succeed to some degree or another, temporarily. But each of the multitude of programmers out there doing this have one or more flaws in their approach. This means that while the idea of web surfer participation will go on and benefit the world as a grassroots concept, each and every one of these little garage projects will eventually close up shop and fail - and I believe that includes the most notable ones: del.icio.us, reddit, youtube, and myspace. All it will take is for new organizations to step into the same niche as these organizations, and do what they are doing with more wisdom... and the old organizations will fade away.

One hallmark of web 2.0 is lack of social standards. Even lack of ethical discussion and ethical standards. Another hallmark is lack of ability for one person who is more inspired than the crowd to stand up and set precedent for the rest of the people who just want to participate, but who haven't thought through their work or project thoroughly yet.

Wikipedia works because the person who designed it, understands that one person in the crowd always has better ideas than the next hundred. People by and large, in our society work as a group... they think as a group. they act as a group. And it doesn't matter how mistaken they are, or how hurtful their agenda is - they will still all act in unanimity with zeal.(Of course, half of humanity is under thirty five years of age - so you have to forgive this attitude)



So, I believe it's very possible to create an innovative thing on the net, even in the midst of a thousand rallying souls, who are all going the wrong direction with their businesses together...



Look at Secondlife - that was a group who had an idea they had picked up from world of warcraft - but Linden Labs did it right. Now a lot of imitators have come out and tried to copy the secondlife approach - and I imagine all of them are doing it awkwardly. (more SecondLife information can be found here)

Pandora music - they developed some pretty innovative software... but generally they are the one music radio station who is fully and properly utilizing the power of computers as it should be used. And they have the social engineering down to a science as well. Furthermore, they have good graphic design and good communication skills.

I believe that in the future, there will always be people who do software wrongly. Big name software companies believe that design flaws are actually benefits... they have created rationales... For instance adobe... believes that slowing down the loading process of their software makes it more easy to use. Some software designers embrace the idea of lack of consistency - because they think the use of the software is less mechanical that way.

Certainly in the world of physical goods... you see lots of companies who think that their design flaws are actually beneficial... I have a cabinet which opens by pressing on a pane of glass - there is no handle. The designer obviously thought that people would learn to be more careful with the cabinet, if they were forced to see it's fragility.

I have a chair which has reflective metal feet which extend in four directions from beneath it... The creator obviously liked the idea of the color blending with whatever decor you had... Sadly though, that very effect makes a person consistently and periodically stub his toe.

I have a clothes cabinet with a little divet which is supposed to be a handle...it doesn't work... one finger alone cannot ever slide that massive door. And what a person is forced to do is to grab the end of the door and slide it that way. What this means, is that consistently and periodically... the hand is caught between the door and the cabinet and is mashed...



Now... another truth about life is that those who have engaged themselves in a project will never change their ways; it puzzles people how newspapers in the usa are not adapting to the times at all.. and they're dying, instead.

So it seems to me that there is no need to worry about copycats and there's no need to worry about established businesses changing to match your style, either. People are just too prone to walking according to precedent. And those who all eagerly start on copycat projects will follow the precedent their own group sets more than they'll follow the precedent your company sets.
© 2006 Christopher vanDyck