Razvan Antonescu

Tonight I was playing with some YouTube features that I need for a web project. Those features are not very common for the vast majority of the users. I am talking here about playlists and custom players.

If you describe to a technical person those features, or even if you only name them, instantly they’ll understand what are they about and they’ll see great use in them. Unfortunately we, technical people, tend to forget that our frame of mind has nothing to do with the regular user. The regular user that comes in huge numbers and it’s our main revenue source. And by forgetting that, we overdevelop things that we like and by doing that we overdelay the launch of the product or we ignore the common features considering them insignificant.

The YouTube features I mentioned above work like total crap. The playlists never display the correct number of videos and the custom players never display all the videos and more than that, this morning were displaying other people playlists. Who the hell cares beside me and maybe a dozen other people. Youtube works well on what is suppsoed to do. Upload and play videos.

If you are in a control position, try explaining to the top management or your client that the fancy crap he needs are not worth any delay. Time is money and the markets are crowded. Release in small chunks and release often. Keep in mind that your products has a final target in the masses not in the elites. Screw the early adopters. Let them complain. If your unique, fancy (and useless most of the cases)  features are so important, the early adopters will wait for them.