Ignoring the Hype Series
This week I will be looking at five companies/websites that seem to get a lot of publicity yet do not “do it” for me. As bloggers there are times where we might get too caught up in the hype of something new maybe because it uses Ajax or some other cool technology or maybe just because it was made by someone that we all revere.
These entries are not meant to bash the people behind the projects, but to look at them a bit differently than what the masses have been writing about. This series was partially inspired by an entry on Anil Dash’s site titled, How Do We Judge Our Tools?.
I currently have four sites lined up and am looking for a 5th so if there is any website/web application out there that makes you wonder what the big deal is then let me know.
As you mention it is a touchy subject and we should only mean to constructively criticise.
http://www.sidejobtrack.com/
Some nice ideas in it but I find the layout quite confusing (the side-by-side page design.)
By Paul Watson on August 7, 2005 8:32 pm
I don’t quite understand the hype around delicious (insert appropriate periods), but maybe I’m just stupid. Or maybe it’s because I don’t have a blog, so I have no reason to “share” my bookmarks.
BTW, I LOVE the sidebar design – please keep it! :-)
By Sage on August 7, 2005 8:41 pm
Oh god, is there no better example in the history of the internet than MySpace? $580 million for a slow, ColdFusion-driven, slap-you-in-the-face-ugly social networking site?
Now, I respect any business which can build itself up as large and as quickly as MySpace has, but WOW is it amateur…
By Mike D. on August 7, 2005 8:48 pm
For something that combines features from Basecamp and Blinksale into one package, I think Side Job Track deserves much more hype than it has recieved.
That being said, as much as I wanted to like it - Blinksale seems to linger as an example of an app that was overhyped. Considering what the actual product delivers, it certainly recieved a huge amount of (extra) attention from many places.
By Jake Tracey on August 7, 2005 8:54 pm
Now this will probably get some peoples panties in a bunch but it is my opinion that 37signals offerings “with exception to rails” are definately overhyped. I find tada list to be too feature barren to warrent its own log in. In the small amount of time I spent using backpacks free version I came to the conclusion that is was basically a rehash of basecamp and really nothing special. Both basecamp and backpack are based on lists and messages it seems and there just doesnt seem to be any creative or original features that will increase my workflow to the point that I would pay for them. That being said I do find the 37signals blog as well as there book to be great sources of information. And Rails is a very nice framework which I enjoy using. Blinksale in my opinion looks like a 37signals knock off with a little more ajax. I read somewhere it was meant for a croud that used basecamp but I dont feel that excuses unoriginality. I also find that creating invoices one by one is tedious. I understand that it is meant for the freelancer but some things could be added that could help I think. I havent looked at it much past its release date but autocomplete of the invoice description field would be nice. Anyway I think hyping your product is something that needs to be done and they do a very good job… I just feel a bit dissapointed by the offerings.
By Derek on August 7, 2005 9:13 pm
Does this include articles hyping articles about too much hype?
Looking forward to it despite my sarcasm.
By Garrett Dimon on August 7, 2005 9:50 pm
How about flicker or flikr, flickr? Whatever, I don’t get what the big deal is. It’s a photo gallery with keywords. So what?
By Jeff Adams on August 7, 2005 9:56 pm
Garrett: Well I figured if I did 5 entries this week talking about overhyping products then people wouldn’t really get the point of it and I would just get killed as being negative for a week.
By Scrivs on August 7, 2005 10:47 pm
Personally, I’d say it’s Odeo for me. It was a cool idea, executed medicorely. The interface is pretty… but honestly, after using it a good 20 minutes I had to forcefully uninstall the “notifier” and stopped using it immediately. I guess I feel they never reached the point of asking themselves whether they should do some effect, and they just did it because they could.
By Kyle on August 7, 2005 10:55 pm
I second delicious (with appropiate periods and corrected spelling) I like the idea of social bookmarks but delicious is way intimidating. I’ve actively tried to get into it at least 4 times and I can never make it past the homepage.
I also second myspace. I joined and it’s a good idea as a community site. but it is incredibly slow and the few features aren’t intuitive enough to warrant the mass following. But as I’m sure others would say… I’m on it because thats where my freinds are…
By sunshine on August 8, 2005 12:31 am
How can people not see the value in delicious? Kill me now! And flickr? You gotta be kidding me. I also love Backpack and use it often (because it’s useful).
On my list of overhyped, I’d have to throw in 43places/things, with some hesitation. I want to love it, but I couldn’t find any use in it.
Upcoming.org is on the cusp. I’ve started using it more but I’d like to see more information posted. Most people don’t add much information to their posts.
Meetup, on the other hand, I would add to the list without hesitation. Pay to be the organizer? No thanks.
Great post, Scrivs. Looking forward to your top five.
By Britt on August 8, 2005 1:07 am
@Mike D
I wholly agree with you about everything you said about MySpace… and having worked there, it is extremely amateurish. I can’t even describe how annoyed I was with the fact that I couldn’t redesign the whole site. Unfortunately Tom wants the site to be “ghetto simple” for people who don’t quite understand… umm… design.
I’ve been on MySpace almost since it started, and I have to say, when it first came out, it was worth the hype in comparison to Friendster. But now, Friendster has matured and come into its own, while MySpace has stagnated and suffered from growing pains.
Other than MySpace, the only other overly-hyped site that I can really think of is Odeo. But I think the reason for that is because I’ve never really bought into the whole podcasting trend.
By Steven Ametjan on August 8, 2005 1:33 am
Just to put in a comment for a website rather than a web application (and referencing your comment about people “we all revere”), I have to say I was distinctly underwhelmed by the recent redesign of Capgemini by Stopdesign and Happy Cog.
By Matthew Pennell on August 8, 2005 3:48 am
Might I suggest a couple that have just got too big? Microsoft? Amazon? And to reiterate the above - I just don’t get Flickr…
looking forward to it
By Richard Leader on August 8, 2005 4:07 am
Yeah, what is 43things good for? Wasting time?
And I just don’t understand Backpack. Why spent hours of organizing what I want to do, just to save some minutes in actually doing it. Huh?
By Julian on August 8, 2005 8:44 am
Definitely FeedLounge. Hyped as Web2.0, but doesn’t even come close.
By Dave on August 8, 2005 8:54 am
Side Job was hyped? Hyped like gushing praise hyped? Really?! Holy shit, I wish someone would have told me that because I think I missed it.
There were really very few mentions of the site and almost every post about the site basically said, “It’s ok but needs blah blah” or “It looks cool but I haven’t used it”, nothing compared to what blinksale received, which is fine, but certainly not comparable. The site has no ajax, no cool technology, wasn’t resoundingly praised and wasn’t built by one of the cool kids; so, how does it fit in the post as described?
Anyways, Paul W., I’m working on cleaning up the interface to address some of the usability issues, check it out in a month or so, hopefully the issues you mention will be resolved with the full release.
By R. Marie Cox on August 8, 2005 9:14 am
I have never got into myspace.com or whatever, but it sounds like crap…however I disagree with the coldfusion comment. Coldfusion can be very useful and powerful when executed corrected. It can, however, be useless if the programmer doesn’t know what he/she is doing, just as in PHP, ASP, JSP, etc…
Anyways, I know plenty of PHP develpers shiver when they see that .cfm extension on a webpage, but its not always that easy to just blame the language.
By Bryan on August 8, 2005 9:15 am
Mike,
Why the slag on ColdFusion? Have you ever used or written a good-sized CF app? CFML is highly modular and manageable, in addition to being very easy to write, and dare I say, “human readable” compared to other scripting languages.
By Geof Harries on August 8, 2005 11:44 am
Hi Geof: Yeah, that was more of a light backhanded love slap against Cold Fusion. It’s an easy server-side solution for small to medium sized sites, but it’s generally not used on huge projects. My guess is that the mySpace team started out with it when they were small and never really got off it. Could that be the cause of the slowness I notice on mySpace? Maybe, maybe not.
Anyway, ColdFusion is fine… it’s just that I’m sure they’ll be off it once they are assimilated into the Murdoch family.
By Mike D. on August 8, 2005 11:58 am
Paul, what do you consider “hype” and what do you consider “reality.” In other words what kind of position are you in to say something is “overhyped” if you don’t know the full story? Do you know the subscription rates on these products or the traffic to these sites? Do you have sales figures to support your claims? Or are you just going to make some noise or hype your own anti-hype?
Here’s my prediction. You are going to use the popularity of these high profile sites and apps to bolster your own traffic. Hyping the hype for your own benefit. Now that’s hype.
By Greg on August 8, 2005 1:43 pm
Greg, first I consider any type of hype to be subjective. One person’s hype is another person’s marketing machine. I am sure this series will bring me some traffic, but then again every time I write I receive traffic.
What I write will carry a fine line between objectivity and just pure playa hatin. I’d like to think that I am taking a different perspective on these sites/applications that might help their creators.
If you want to achieve traffic to your site (do you even have a site?) do you simply link to what everyone else is linking to or say the exact same thing everyone else is saying? I try my best not to work like that. If that is my way of building Whitespace hype then so be it. In fact, next week I had Ignoring the Hype: Scrivs planned out.
I wish you could make your comment with an email address or url because it would hold more weight to me.
By Scrivs on August 8, 2005 2:05 pm
Dave, what would make you say that? How do you define Web 2.0?
By Scott Sanders on August 8, 2005 2:15 pm
I third (fourth?) the del.icio.us vote. I posted on my site once about not understanding the del.icio.us hype. I got a good explanation of what some people consider neat about del.icio.us, but I still have a very “meh” feeling about it. Maybe it’s one of those “have to use it to love it” tools.
By Nicole on August 8, 2005 2:54 pm
@Mike D, again
MySpace is already in the process of moving off of CF. While I was there they were in the process of writing their first .NET application for the web search. Sadly, the single developer who I was working with on it, didn’t quite understand standards so my XHTML 1 trans results page turned into something resembling HTML 3.2. Font tags and tables were strewn about as the developer thought they were needed, and ultimately all I did was provide an HTML mockup that they then based their work on.
As far as the slowness of MySpace, a lot has to do with the amount of traffic that is flooding the servers on a regular basis, and how they’re configured. I’m not sure, but I believe MySpace only has one data center with a couple different servers.. I think the number was at 10 while I was there. And of those servers some are configured for different purposes, so the profile servers are almost always going to be slower than say the message servers.
By Steven Ametjan on August 8, 2005 2:54 pm
CFML, along with any ~insert language~ app written with forethought, can be as speedy or as slow as you want to make it. I don’t think a blanket statement against CF is warranted in this regard.
CFML powers lots of big apps - maybe not the hip and hyped ones we see everyday on the web, but loads of intranet, business and gov’t sites. I for one have been involved in many a CF project where it scales/performs as well as any other enterprise-level language could be expected to. Add to the pile its java tie-ins, and now with BlueDragon .NET, and you’ve got a killer package.
I greatly respect ya Mike, but I’ve got to stand up for this excellent, mature language that gets slagged for no good reason - more often than not, a smisunderstanding of its true capabilities.
By Geof Harries on August 8, 2005 3:04 pm
Finally, a meme watcher or blog buzz kill. Thanks, and, I suggest showing these at the Blog Business Summit.
By DL Byron on August 8, 2005 5:59 pm
Flickr. I think the site is great but the hype it’s receiving is a bit much. I really do think it’s a fad that will fade away. Technology that helps to make a demanded process more efficient is worth it’s weight in gold. Flickr’s keywords do that. But loads of other sites implement it as well or better (fotoflix.com, zoto.com).
The social networking aspect of flickr is cool. But not really much more than that. It’s new and shiny…but when did i ever *really* want to look at someone else’s photos. Sharing photos with people you know is and always will be for the masses. Flickr hit a small niche at the right time (along with delicious, 43 things, ect).
I’m aware of Flickr’s groups and privacy settings. But I think it’s their “social networking” capabilities that have gotten so much hype…which I think will be short lived.
At least they got acquired by Yahoo! before the hype ended :).
By Jaisen on August 8, 2005 6:49 pm
Technorati. Scoble’s blog. 43Things. I’d say Weblogs, Inc. but you have to rate before you’re overrated.
By Phil on August 8, 2005 10:11 pm
Scott: don’t get me wrong. FeedLounge is cool. It’s still in alpha phase, but yet it gets the job done well.
What I wanted to say is that it is basically copying a rich client application interface to bring the functionality it provides to the web. Which is not bad, since the layout it is using is most likely the only one that makes sense in such an environment. With “hyped”, I was mainly referring to the reviews that are popping up everywhere, and a bit of the buzz that is around FeedLounge because it is the first web-based RSS reader that is using Ajax. I do, though, think that, for example, GMail is more “Web2.0″ than FeedLounge is. Not because it feels snappier, but because it had brought a Rich Client feeling to a web app without copying a Rich Client approach (think of Outlook, Thunderbird and all other Mail apps that have this oldschool layout with a folder column on the left and two panes on the right).
Web apps that look and feel like FeedLounge have been around for years. They often reloaded entire parts, were using frames or hidden iFrames etc, but they all shared one idea: replace Rich Applications. Feedlounge does that, too, but uses Ajax to make the experience a lot better. This is good, but I don’t think it should be labeled as revolutionary or something. But rather as the next logical step in evolution of Rich Internet Applications, and a brilliant approach towards reading news feeds on the web (I love the tagging functionality, for instance).
So… don’t regard it as an offense. I really like FeedLounge, you know ;)
By Dave on August 9, 2005 7:21 am
Oh, I second Technorati. It could be so useful and you would think it is for all the time it has been around and the persistent mentions of it but actually trying to do something useful with it is tough. Watchlists need Flickr like tag clustering (because AJAX is also a horse, football team and a detergent). It is quite slow to use too.
Once again, a really good idea and something we need but just not executed terribly well.
And thanks for the feedback, R. Marie Cox. I will check back on SideJobTrack in a month or so.
By Paul Watson on August 9, 2005 7:43 am
Dave: Stay tuned, we’re not done yet :) The first step was to build an interface that could possibly pull you away from the incumbents, now we are working on the features that no rich app will be able to give you, because it is a barren island in this internet ocean.
I know you like FeedLounge, but I would say that we are headed in the Web2.0 direction, even though I agree with you that the UI alone does not make it Web2.0. But we did have to start somewhere ;)
By Scott Sanders on August 9, 2005 12:58 pm
Jeff, Flickr deserves every bit of hype it gets. There’s nothing like it. Nothing. It’s amazing!
By Alex Miller on August 9, 2005 1:31 pm
I’m surprised that people don’t get del.icio.us - I use it and love it (especially when combined with the BetterSearch Firefox plugin which adds thumbnails to each bookmark).
At its core it’s just an web-based bookmarking tool that’s simple to use. That’s it. There are plenty of other similar services out there, but this one works just fine for me.
In addition there is the social bookmarking aspect, which is nice, but of secondary importance to me. I just like the fact that I can easily bookmark sites, tag them appropriately and find them from any PC when I need them.
On the other hand the “Populicious” feed which shows the most popular del.icio.us sites for the last 24 hours is a godsend for keeping up with what’s hot/cool on the web. Which usually is the latest Web 2.0 app that looks cool but serves no long term useful function.
My vote would be for 43 Things - what is the point of it? Don’t people have enough ways to waste their time online already?
By Christian Watson on August 9, 2005 4:27 pm