Many in the start-up world frequently mention an interesting warning: don’t create a product that is a solution looking for a problem. Rather, find the problem, and create the solution to it.
I’m not here to debate the veracity of that argument, but rather present an interesting thought that I twittered.
On IM chat clients, specifically AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger, it took years before you could leave a message for someone and them receive it upon signing back in the service (if the message was sent while they were logged out.)
Add that to the skyrocketing use of the away message, and it was nearly impossible to know if the intended recipient truly read the message or not. Perhaps he or she signed in a different computer and logged out the computer logged in with the away message. Maybe the user signed in and accidentally closed the window with the message.
I wonder how much this contributed to the rise of the static social network (i.e. Friendster, Facebook, Hi5, Myspace, etc.)
Guestbooks, known on Fbook as “The Wall” and on MySpace as simply comments, has been around for years before the web 2.0 era, but usually hosted on an individual service platform, a la tripod or geocities, which wasn’t really well connected with users.
Xanga did a better job of this, but it was still more about blogging and sharing your life story than it was about connecting with your friends.
Even now, when I use AIM integrated with Gmail, my Gmail sidebar only shows me users who are “active.” I have about fifty friends who are always signed on, albeit with an “away message.” With the ability to send messages while in away status (and to even hide being signed on) this inevitably has led to most people simply never taking off their away message.
Obviously, this is a boon for privacy, but not so much for communication. That’s what I feel is the main attractiveness about the wall (besides being a lot less private than a direct IM). You leave a message, and if the user uses the service regularly, they WILL see the message, no doubt about it (as well as all of his or her friends).
Honestly I know this is a lot of analysis on such a small feature, but I strongly believe that it’s the small features that make or break a service.
Oh, and while using Gmail today, I realized that the behemoth must have plans to buy either Scribd or Docstoc.
Why?
Well when someone sends me an mp3, I can open that directly via Gmail, ditto for a 97-2003 word document, excel spreadsheet, or powerpoint.
But I can’t do that with a PDF.
I have to actually download the PDF to my computer, which is a big pain. And until they have Gdrive, maybe even more important when Gdrive releases, seamless PDF integration will be very important, and I believe Docstoc or Scribd will fit in nicely with Google Docs, Gmail, and the Google Apps suite.
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