Remember the first dot-com boom when people started to think that creating a company was just about creating a website? They would register a domain before they had a business plan? Crazy days of sock puppets and and people renaming themselves as dot com versions. Behind the craziness was the reality that to a large extent you did have to have a website. A website was table stakes, and this continues to be the case.
With the iPhone another gold rush occurred. The initial rush is over and you can’t just throw an application into the appstore and hope to make a fortune. You actually have to create something compelling and differentiated to make hour mark. Imagine that!
The “quick buck” allure isn’t there and we are onto the next level of maturity. Having an experience for iPhone users has become table stakes for some too.
So, now you have created your website, and iPhone app, do you go to an Android app? Facebook? One for a new 3D TV? :) It is starting to get daunting.
Walking around at CES the consumer in me gets very excited to see the proliferation of devices. Everything is connected, everything has an API.
Then the developer in me wonders how this is going to scale and how we are going to deliver great experiences to all.
My hope is that the Web can become a great unifying platform. It isn’t easy to build Web apps that will just work anywhere. I just talked about the issues and fun of developing for devices and we are going to be getting a lot more form factors out there.
April 30th, 2010 at 8:07 am
I like how none of them said “I need a Flash app” :)