The reality distortion field surrounding certain members of the tech community has been growing stronger and stronger these days. It seems like every other week, some company or another is being called the “Next Big Thing”. Some product with almost no market share and a flashy, new feature is being touted as the next step in the web’s evolution.

It has become a bit sickening, so to try to bring us all back to earth, I am going to take a look at what it really takes to make a product that people will actually want to use.

Making Them Care

If you want to understand everything that you need to know about invention, read this quote.

“The telephone and telegraph provided services that were fundamentally different. The telegraph required an expert operator with knowledge of Morse code, while the telephone terminal was very simple and did not require any expertise. Consequently the telephone was targeted as a direct service to end users, first in the business and later in residential markets. The deployment of telephones grew quickly, from 100 phones in 1877 to 50,000 in 1880 and 250,000 in 1890.” –Communication Networks, Fundamental Concepts and Key Architectures

The point is that if you want any chance of getting a product to reach a mainstream audience you have to look outside of yourself and realize that most people — your customers — do not have a deep understanding of the web.

AOL worked because even someone who had never touched a computer before could understand it. Facebook worked because its target demographic, college students, were used to things like MySpace and Friendster. The iPhone sold millions of units because anyone who owned a cell phone or an iPod could figure out how to get it to do almost anything that they wanted it to. These companies worked because they were simple enough that anyone could see the value proposition.

When you look at a company like Pownce or Twitter, you see products that cannot scale in their current implementations. There is no reason for anyone who has grown accustomed to email and instant messaging to make the switch. Grandparents who want to keep up with their grand-children, students who want to keep track of their friends, business folks in traditional industries who want to communicate amongst themselves, none of these people have any real use for either of these products.

Does that mean that they will fail? Of course not. There are plenty of geeks and pundits out there (myself included) who will wile away countless hours on any new Web X.0 service to come over the horizon. All this means is that these products are not the revolutions of social media that some people seem to think they are.

The Case Of Google

Since everyone seems to be looking for the next Google killer, let me tell you something. The only product capable of killing Google will be one that either changes the paradigm of search or beats Google at its own game.

When I say, “change the paradigm,” I am not talking about “Guided Search” or glorified directories. Instead I am referring to something like competent natural language search. An engine that would allow me to ask a complex question and parse it into contextually relevant results.

What do I mean by beating Google at its own game? Well, you would need to create a service that beats Google in search (a better algorithm), beats Google’s distribution (better Adsense) and manges to beat Google’s corporate presence (”Do No Evil”). If you can’t pull off all of these things, you are fighting an uphill battle.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Here is my suggestion for anyone out there right now developing the “Next Big Thing” in their garage. If you want to know whether you have an idea that can become great, tell ten random people about it and see what they think. Explain it to them in a few sentences, something like, “The telephone lets you talk to anyone in the world no matter the distance.” If you can’t sell them on how great your idea is with this kind of pitch, chances are very good that your need to find your niche.

Not every new product has to be revolutionary, but unless you realize that yours may not be you can waste a lot of time trying to convince people to use something that will never, really need.

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