Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

deap.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 185 posts

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#141

Post by shostack »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #8

This is a really, really, important point. How many times have you gotten an app or a tool, used it a few times, and then not ever used it again? If you are an early adopter type you probably have many times. Whether it is todo lists or pizza delivery, if you don't do it enough to ingrain the habit it doesn't stick. And once your head is filled with the cognitive load of day to day stuff you revert to your habits (wh…

There's also the carrot vs. stick approach for the games industry.

I'm proud to say that I appear to have kicked my Clash of Clans habit (which I realized I'd logged into at least 1-2x daily for a couple years straight). However the notion that I'd lose a ton of progress in my ranking, all my saved up resources, etc. was a huge barrier while I still had it in my mind that I'd continue playing it.

When I crossed the threshold of internalizing that worrying about making up that progress in the future was futile since I wouldn't pick it up again, things got a lot easier

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#142

Post by thetruthseeker1 »

It reminds me of the GoT dialogue " Chaos is a ladder, my friend" : What I mean is the products that are 'shitty' and are thriving is because probably each one of them were created to solve a problem where absolutely nothing like that product existed before and the original product founders were sharp enough to notice a market and business opportunity. This shitty product was so good when it came out, it changed the way ppl did business and led to its mass adoption with little marketing. The other better products that came later on, however usable they are, are probably providing marginal ( as per the product users) value over the previous product hence lower adoption rate and requires huge marketing $. That is why if you notice a new market/business opportunity it is most lucrative path.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#143

Post by mmatants »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #8

This is a really, really, important point. How many times have you gotten an app or a tool, used it a few times, and then not ever used it again? If you are an early adopter type you probably have many times. Whether it is todo lists or pizza delivery, if you don't do it enough to ingrain the habit it doesn't stick. And once your head is filled with the cognitive load of day to day stuff you revert to your habits (wh…

Feels like for institutional tools (where end users are mandated to just use that one system) it's not even the retention that is the problem.

I would generalize it (perhaps ad absurdum) instead as: do not underestimate costs of user onboarding (in whichever shape or form).

I wonder if developing a competitive replacement app actually involves replicating legacy UI. As wasteful as that may seem. And only after that hurdle is nullified, there will be a chance to gradually wean users towards a new experience pattern.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#144

Post by uremog »

While yes, I do use OpenTable for places at which I am already an existing customer, it's not that simple. I'm usually not willing to visit a restaurant that I might not get into. OT is the most painless way to make the reservation, and I far prefer this over calling. Without a restaurant being accessible on OT, I would not be going there nearly as often.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#145

Post by fumar »

renlo wrote: post #73
fumar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Office (by the way 2016 is a pretty solid software suite) is not thriving because of institutional knowledge. Office is great because users in most business settings can quickly pick up any of its applications (learn how to use it) and apply the same learnings to the rest of the suite, personal knowledge with a small learning curve. Also, tools like Excel are malleable and useable for most users in a compan…

Your argument is that Microsoft Office is not thriving because of institutional knowledge, then you proceed to prove that it is institutional knowledge that makes it a valuable tool. If your arguments are: 1) Most users can pick it up easily due to familiarity. 2) Excel is a general tool usable by many disparate groups in the organization. 3) Excel is the lingua franca of manipulating data within the organization. Th…

I stand corrected.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#146

Post by slavik81 »

WA wrote: post #13
ChuckMcM wrote: post #8

This is a really, really, important point. How many times have you gotten an app or a tool, used it a few times, and then not ever used it again? If you are an early adopter type you probably have many times. Whether it is todo lists or pizza delivery, if you don't do it enough to ingrain the habit it doesn't stick. And once your head is filled with the cognitive load of day to day stuff you revert to your habits (wh…

For me, this is Twitter. I'm mostly a reader. Writing tweets was incredibly unsatisfying so far and I never got into any kind of habit with it. Sometimes, I have the urge to simply get some random thoughts out of my brain. Sounds like a perfect thing for Twitter, except with Twitter, I have the expectation that my stuff somehow gets noticed. So instead, I use JOURNAL.TXT for that. I write the thought down, it's out o…

> Sometimes, I have the urge to simply get some random thoughts out of my brain. Sounds like a perfect thing for Twitter, except with Twitter, I have the expectation that my stuff somehow gets noticed.

That's funny. I chose Twitter for that purpose specifically because I had no followers.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#147

Post by [deleted] »

someguydave wrote: post #50
fumar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Office (by the way 2016 is a pretty solid software suite) is not thriving because of institutional knowledge. Office is great because users in most business settings can quickly pick up any of its applications (learn how to use it) and apply the same learnings to the rest of the suite, personal knowledge with a small learning curve. Also, tools like Excel are malleable and useable for most users in a compan…

> Office is great because users in most business settings can quickly pick up any of its applications My experience is that 'users in business settings' absolutely refuse to consider any alternatives, mainly because of two 'fear factors': 1.) "Everyone else in my industry uses Microsoft Office products so I must as well" 2.) (Usually unstated explicitly) "Learning an alternative is going to cost me time and money and…

[deleted]

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#148

Post by cpncrunch »

vitd wrote: post #139
cpncrunch wrote: post #111

I think perhaps the writer is using some cognitive dissonance to unfairly dismiss the market leaders as being "shitty". Any time I have used OpenTable (as a user) it has been a really great experience. It does exactly what you expect it to do, and it's always a very smooth experience. OpenTable has been around since 1998, so I imagine they are the market leader because they were the first to market and their product…

My experiences with it are that it is extremely shitty. I often go to it to see if there are any tables at my desired time, and if there are, I manually call the place and book the reservation directly. Whenever I go to it, it tries to push a bunch of unrelated crap to me. No, I don't want to get daily emails about this restaurant I'm eating at once while on vacation. (Does anyone want that?) The UI is horrible and c…

>No, I don't want to get daily emails about this restaurant I'm eating at once while on vacation

I'm a spam nazi...if anyone spams me, I'll remember. I see I still have the opentable@mydomain.com active, which means they haven't spammed me yet.

I just had another look at their site, and I don't see any UI issues myself. You find the restaurant, choose date, and it shows you the times available. You then just confirm the details and click COMPLETE RESERVATION. Nothing too skanky about that. There are boxes you can tick in the confirmation page to subscribe to updates, but they are unticked by default (at least in Canada, where it is now illegal to sign people up automatically).

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#149

Post by Terr_ »

Marcus316 wrote: post #20
WA wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, this is Twitter. I'm mostly a reader. Writing tweets was incredibly unsatisfying so far and I never got into any kind of habit with it. Sometimes, I have the urge to simply get some random thoughts out of my brain. Sounds like a perfect thing for Twitter, except with Twitter, I have the expectation that my stuff somehow gets noticed. So instead, I use JOURNAL.TXT for that. I write the thought down, it's out o…

I should do this. Thanks for the idea! I've found that a lot of the time, when I'm on any sort of social media (including here on HN), I will open the reply box, type in a reply, read it, then discard it. I certainly have the need to get it out of my system, but I usually don't feel like sharing (I'm quite self-conscious most of the time). A small text file is an idea I should have thought of myself, but now the seed…

I'm more of the "edit it 30 times in the next 15 minutes" persuasion. Not because I post quickly, but because there's always something else I think I need to tweak.

Re: Why Shitty Products Survive and Thrive

#150

Post by FussyZeus »

detaro wrote: post #105
FussyZeus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defense of Word: The vast majority of people don't realize just how massive Word is in terms of it's feature set and it's complexity, Word is a fully furnished publishing program and most people treat it like a rich text editor. I still have and use it irregularly for a few things, but if you just need to edit text with formatting, use TextEdit. Using Word to type up a memo is like using a jet engine to cook a TV…

To stay with wacky imagery, using Word to do high-quality publishing work is like carving wood with a spoon. It's kinda possible, but takes unnecessarily long, you'll break your tool a few times and the end result doesn't look all that great. (It's actually used in many publishing workflows, but for the early stages, where all you want is a rich text editor with the ability to do diffs. Typography and layout is done…

I've seen numerous examples to the contrary, I'm willing to grant it isn't the best publishing tool out there (far from it) but if you get someone who's properly trained, you can get some very good looking documents out of it.

Also very useful for smaller mass mailers and the like, where you don't have the budget for a full feature publishing suite (or the need).

Post reply on HN