Building the Killer App - Forget It


Building the “Killer App”—Forget It!

Back during the big dot-com boom of the late 1990s, a popular catch term (especially in the presence of venture capitalists) was “the killer app.” Everybody claimed they had an idea for the ultimate application, the killer app. Now usually the people who thought up these killer apps were young men in their late teens and early twenties, people who were great at hacking out code but had zero business and marketing experience—and very little, if any, knowledge of usability. (Please don’t be offended by that statement; it’s just a simple fact of the background of the typical 20-year-old programmer. Very few have had experience working in marketing departments, for example, because their interests are usually strictly in programming.)

So everybody had an idea for the killer app. Let’s see what applications are on this very computer I’m using.

  • First, I have Microsoft Windows XP.

  • Next, I have Outlook 2000.

  • And I also have Netscape Navigator.

  • Of course, I have Microsoft Word and Excel.

  • Let’s see, there’s Internet Explorer.

  • And WinZip.

  • I have Microsoft Photo Editor.

  • I have a trial version of Paint Shop Pro, which has expired and I can’t use.

  • I have a purchased version of Dreamweaver and Fireworks, both from Macromedia.

  • I have purchased copies of older versions of Borland Delphi and Borland C++Builder.

  • And yes, I admit, I have AOL 7.0 software on here.

  • The computer came with McAfee virus-protection software.

Now look at this list carefully: Most of this software came from Microsoft. And then some came from AOL, which also owns Netscape. The programming tools—Borland Delphi and Borland C++Builder—came from Borland, which has been around since 1983. Macromedia, which makes Dreamweaver and Fireworks, has been around since the late 1980s. Paint Shop Pro came from Jasc Software, which started in 1991. And, of course, McAfee has been around forever, it seems. WinZip first appeared in the early 1990s.

In other words, how many software packages on my computer do I have that were the result of a dot-com that started right in the midst of the boom of the late 1990s? None. Zero! Not a single application. What happened to all those “killer apps”? They must have been more like “suicide apps” because they sure didn’t kill any competition.

For that matter, did they even have any competition?

Let’s look a little more closely and be a bit fairer. First, many of the dot-coms were creating software that runs out on the Internet, and today we do have a few of these software products out there. Google is a big one. And so are Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, and Akamai. They’re still going strong. But what about all those little dot-coms that had big ideas of how I was going to use my computer by the year 2000? They’re all gone. And what was that I asked about competition? Well, remember, competition is a fundamental point in marketing. If you have competition, then you will have to work to beat the competition. If you have no competition and never did, then what does that say about your product if nobody else was willing to create something similar?

Here’s an actual example: In the earlier Windows days (dare I say daze?), I came across a program, whose name I don’t even remember, that was supposed to add a ton of functionality to Program Manager. (Remember, Program Manager was the precursor to today’s Windows Explorer; it was the shell launcher.) Using various ugly hacking techniques (such as intercepting API calls), this program added menu items to Program Manager and had such silly features as new mouse pointers that looked like oversized hands. The marketing material claimed that this program added all the features that Microsoft forgot. Well, sorry, but Microsoft didn’t forget these features. Instead, Microsoft chose not to include these features because they simply weren’t needed. And indeed, nobody else seemed to want these features, and the product died a quick death.

Or here’s another example: In the latter part of 1999 and early 2000, wireless technology was really starting to take off. People had all kinds of ideas for killer apps that would run on cell phones. For instance, one idea was that someday I could walk into a grocery store and immediately see a bunch of coupons appear on my cell phone. At that point, the story becomes vague and unclear, but I suppose I would show my cell phone to the nice person at the cash register, who would then type a coupon code into the register.

Well, I can think of several problems with this idea. First, what about people without cell phones? Do they just miss out? That’s not fair. And second, why do you even need the cell phone? If the special is just for a little while in the store, why can’t they just turn on a big flashing blue light and shout something into the PA system: “Hellllloooo shoppers! We’re having a special in hardware! Get over here in the next 10 minutes, and get your cans of white paint at 50 percent off!” And the really nice thing about this blinking blue light system is that it’s much more robust and reliable, simply because it requires no programming.

No surprise, venture capitalists in their amazing insight flocked to the 20-something oracles with their ponytails and promises of killer apps and flooded them with money. And while the press releases made the technology sound like a given, today the companies are gone (along with the investment money).

In the dot-com boom, a lot of these killer apps were big ideas and big dreams about how I would use my computer today, and many of these applications really did have no competition. That’s because the ideas were so incredibly far-fetched that only a zealot who could talk big to investors could get the product going.

A popular book during the late 1990s about the dot-com business (and still a good book) is Crossing the Chasm, rev. ed., by Geoffrey A. Moore (HarperBusiness, 2002). This book talks about the different stages of high-tech acceptance. The idea is that somebody would have a great idea, and initially the only people who would use the product were those called early adopters. Eventually, as the software company succeeded in moving past the early adopters to the general masses (a leap over the chasm), the company would make it into the big time.

It was over this chasm where most software companies died. A bunch of young programmers had a brilliant idea for the killer app, and they convinced the investors to fly with it. They got a basic version 1.0 finished, and a few early adopters started using it. (I’m very familiar with this because I was involved with at least two technologies that have since fizzled. My ego won’t allow me to say what they were!) But beyond that, much to the dismay of the developers and investors, people just weren’t interested.

But why did all this happen? Because the programmers were behaving like programmers, not users. They didn’t step into the minds of the users and ask themselves, “What do users really want?” These programmers really wanted to believe that if they just built something awesome, the world would stand in amazement and start using the product.

Unfortunately, people just aren’t that way. While some of us might be the first to jump at new technology, most people aren’t. And this isn’t because they’re afraid of the technology; they simply don’t see a need for it. Convince me that I must read my books on the computer in the form of an e-book. (Doesn’t a regular paper book work fine?) Show me that I really need to carry a device into a retail store, and that device will display current specials and coupons. (Don’t the big stores already have fliers printed on newsprint for us to grab when we go in, and doesn’t that work fine?)

Back in the mid-1980s, I was sitting at an Apple II computer, and I had a program that would draw a 3D plot of a curve that looked basically like a peanut. It was just a vector graphic and quite boring. But I was impressed with it and I showed the screen to a young woman I knew. She looked at it and said, “But why?” That confused me. I said, “Isn’t that cool?” And she again said, “Well, yes, but why do that? What’s the point?”

I didn’t have an answer. And you know what? I still don’t. Just because the “cool technology” is there doesn’t mean that the world is going to instantly embrace it.

So what makes a good software package survive? Two things:

  • The world really does need it (or, at least the people believe they need it because it really does make their lives easier). Or the world really wants it for entertainment, as in exciting games.

  • The software is highly useable.

I use the online banking feature of my bank. I go to the website, enter my username and password, and from there I can easily balance my checkbook. I rarely even look at the statements they send me in the mail anymore. The online banking application is easy to use, and it really does make my life easier. I don’t have to wait every month for my statement. Instead, I can just go online anytime I want and see which checks have cleared.

And this application is incredibly easy to use; it’s simple. It doesn’t have a huge amount of complexity: It shows me a list of my accounts; I can click on an account and get the transactions so far for this month. And I can look at last month’s transactions if I want, and the month before that.

Recently they added a nice feature where I can click on a check and see a scanned image of the check. That’s a lot easier than ordering a check, and I can see to whom I made out the check.

I can also transfer funds between my accounts by clicking the Transfer Funds link, typing in the amount, and choosing the to and from accounts.

Does this qualify as a killer app? Not by any means! This program didn’t require any programming wizardry (with all due respect to those who wrote the application), and it didn’t require any work of sheer genius. It was simply a need; people wanted to be able to access their bank balances online, and so the banks started adding the capability as an extra feature included with your account.

In fact, the banks saw a need in this: Other banks had online services, so in order to compete, each bank needed to say that they too offered online banking services. And people have come to expect them.

And this online banking phenomenon has happened gradually; it evolved over time. Before online banking, we had phone banking. I don’t know how far back phone banking goes, but I do know that I discovered it in the early 1990s. I could call an 800 number, find out my balance, see what checks and other transactions had cleared, transfer funds, and so on. In other words, I could do almost everything I can with online banking today. Online banking was a natural “next step” from telephone banking. Again, this wasn’t a sudden mark of genius where some 19-year-old guy with a ponytail woke up after a hard night of delivering pizzas and said, “Hey! I got it! Online banking! I’m gonna be a billionaire!” After which he ran to the investors, started a dot-com, and became a billionaire six times over.

Now what about something like the Yahoo! search engine? I would almost dare say this was a killer app. But was it? The idea was actually surprisingly simple: Let’s get together and catalog the websites on the Internet. That’s not too earth shattering. And if you recall the history of Yahoo!, the guys started it in their college dorm room, without any big plans to turn this into a megacorporation that would eventually go public, with a value in the billions. The Yahoo! company, however, has had a lot of ups and downs, and in recent times they’ve had to greatly rethink their direction. They’re more than just a catalogue of the Internet now; they offer communities, e-mail, and loads of other services, some free and some for pay. (I myself sent in my $20 or whatever it was to increase my mailbox size.) And these features were all the result of careful, sound business decisions after bringing in loads of highly qualified individuals.

Let’s face it: The killer app concept is a dead one that never even saw the light of day. And what does that mean for you? If you’re a software developer, then I would suggest focusing on things that count. While you can certainly work on your secret projects (as Alan Cooper did when he invented Visual Basic and sold it to Microsoft), the truth is that if you want to eat and pay your bills, you must also focus on software that matters. (Alan Cooper was lucky that he managed to sell his product; a lot of other people never do. I wrote a WYSIWYG web editor back in the mid-to-late 1990s that would have given Dreamweaver a good run for its money, but I wasn’t able to sell it, and so it now sits on my hard drive as an artifact of the software world.)

Therefore:

RULE

Base your software on what the world needs, not on what you think you can convince the world it needs.

And:

RULE

Don’t worry about gee-whiz technology; instead, focus your time making your software good—that is, useable.

Finally, think of the concept car. Each year the major auto manufacturers make a concept car, something they hope we’ll all be driving in years to come. But they know that these are just concepts and not totally serious. Certain parts of the technology will end up in our cars tomorrow (I would imagine cruise control was once part of a concept car). But the cars we continue to drive today look more like the cars from 10 years ago than the concept cars of recent years. Why? Because the existing concepts are proven, good, and solid. If you focus on making your software good and solid using proven technologies, you will be way ahead of the game. Leave the killer app for your evenings in the garage, and maybe you’ll get lucky and sell it like Alan Cooper did.




Designing Highly Useable Software
Designing Highly Useable Software
ISBN: 0782143016
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 114

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