Are you trying to make an easier way for people to post their pictures online (Flickr)? Are you trying to organize a user’’s social media identity (Friendfeed)? Maybe you are just trying to aggregate cool, interesting videos (YouTube).

The point is that before you start throwing features onto your platform, you need to find the question that defines you.

What Do You Do Again?

Good products solve a single, focused problem. People use them because they understand what it is that they’re using. Every feature, every UI decision, every aspect of the design is crafted to make some part of their lives easier to manage.

Bad products are a sea of confused decision designed by committee. No part is particularly bad, and no idea seems particularly ludicrous but there is no guiding light tying them together. The user is left unsatisfied because they have no idea what the product was trying to do for them.

One of the biggest threats to the success of your product are your own good ideas. Every new “brilliant” addition to your product, is one step towards obfuscating your purpose. New features are fine, but they should be created for a reason and that reason needs to be inline with your products core purpose.

A few questions to ask yourself before implementing a new feature:

• Does this feature help to solve my original problem?
• Does this feature make the user experience more difficult?
• If I launched my product without this features, is it something a user would notice?
• Am I adding this feature for my users, or because I think it’s cool?
• How often would an average person use this feature?

Answering these questions will tell you whether competitive tagging is just what your social network for Fish lovers needed, or whether your focus should be directed elsewhere.

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