manalang

I spent this past Monday attending the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.  I got a good taste of the Web 2.0 entrepreneur’s fervor for this business.  It’s pretty wild to see so many passionate billionaire wannabes under one roof.  One of my colleagues (Paul) nails the essence of Web 2.0 in this post:

“Having spent the last three days at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, I have seen  lot of companies. There are some great ideas and some rather foolish ones, but what has struck me is the power of simplicity.

I am not talking about simplicity in the usual context of User Experience (UI). We are all well aware that simple design is a maxim of Web 2.0, but I am more interested, and frankly impressed, by simplicity on the dimension of idea. The real question you need to ask is, how simple is my idea?

The power of simple ideas as they relate to Web 2.0 is critical and truly drive the success or failure of a business. Again, in stark contrast to the quality of UI driving success. Now, I am a huge fan of elegant UI and I really don’t enjoy ugly applications, but it is not a key principle to a successful on-line business. For all who doubt that, go to eBay and post a product for sale. Now imagine that interface when they launched. Yes, it’s better now. No, it’s not a great experience. Yet, here they are.”

To me the user experience is a central component to the Web 2.0 success.  There are other aspects, but nothing encapsulates all of those ideas better than, “Simple.”  Most companies who experienced success at one point, did so because they either had a simple product, idea, or service that their customers were passionate about.  If a company is lucky, they can continue to capitalize on simplicity of their business, but often times they become complex and unwieldy… like most big organizations.

In a Web 2.0 world, simplicity is key.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, entrepreneurship, startuping

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 7:48 PM PDT and is tagged with internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.