Web 2.0 Has ADHD
by
on April 13, 2008,
Eric Rice posed an interesting theory last week, asking if social web early adopters have psychological disorders. My initial knee-jerk reaction was to be offended. As someone who's been wanting a plug in my head for accessing the Web since I first read Neuromancer, I thought of early adopters as eager to get to that next step in the technology progression.
Then I re-read the article and took a look at my password file. I now have over 100 user IDs and passwords in there, and that doesn't include sites I use my OpenID login for. I'm sure I can always claim that the number of accounts is due to the number of apps I review here on Profy, but the reality is that a lot of them have nothing to do with doing research for an article.
As tech users, we've developed a serious problem with attention, whether it's the latest electronics or Web apps. Everyone wants to be the one riding the front of the wave of a new trend, and if that means signing up for everything, so be it. How many people wait to buy an iPod because they are afraid a newer one will be released shortly after? How many move from social network to social network just because that's where all the "cool people" seem to be going?
We are no longer content with an application that does everything you want it to do. Even if something exists that already meets all our expectations, we are looking for the next interesting product that comes along, leaving a trail of discarded accounts and apps in our wake.
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Bighorn
kalipso
Mav
Opensource 
Michael Fidler 
Maybe we, in fact, just need to comsider the power of value. It’s easy to try new sites out, but if they don’t provide any value that we won’t get with the next site that comes along then we won’t stay with it. In my opinion, far too many Web 2.0 sites are “cool” and not valuable. Frankly, anything twitter related falls into the former - once the novelty dies off telling people (and reading about people) what socks they’re wearing we’ll wonder what the real value was. Then, maybe, the interest will be left in those applications that bring real benefit.
Ian Hendry
http://www.wecando.biz
As a founder, whenever I tell people that our main user group are the web early adopters (like you and me), I often get a reply like “Well, that’s the most unloyal crowd you can find”.
True. And not true.
I’ve found that while I switch around trying new apps, a few things rarely ever change - the underlying tools that *enable* me to switch around. Once I find a utility that does it’s job, I don’t even dream of changing it.
The loyalty to underlying tools runs deep.
**
BTW, Francesco and I were talking the other night about how we could be much more productive if we could just get a plug into our brains and “think” the code onto the screen — Neuromancer here we come!!… can’t decide if that means we’re sick, or just lazy.
@Ian I agree, as you can tell by the number of pieces I’ve written about apps that should never have seen the light of day. However, the Bloggerati on the whole seem to move favorites regularly (the move from del.icio.us to Ma.gnolia and now to Diigo, for instance) which is leaving a huge detritus of data behind.
@Tara I think you are partially right. There are some apps that people do cling to like Linus and his blanket (BTW, have you guys decided I’m your unofficial evangelist yet? LOL) that you can’t see ever abandoning. But I’m finding that those apps are the ones that don’t have as much of a reliance on the social aspect. If using the app is interdependent on the social aspects and everyone starts moving on to the next big thing, it becomes less useful.
Web 2.0 is all about packaging features as products. I spent 4 years on a big team building a very large app in the Web 1.0 timeframe that, in the end, was deemed to just be a “feature” of a large ERP system and sold off. The time and code that went into that one app would be equivalent to the sum of most of the Web 2.0 apps out there now, and yet somehow Web 2.0 is a whole new ecosystem of “apps”? Get real.
Rounded corners and whizbang UI’s do not an application make.
“People” aren’t a collective. There are early adopter, technophiles, technophobes ( not many of them online I should expect ), functionally illiterate, bloody annoying…
Bloggers are least are some sort of self-sorting subset, admittedly. The main thing most people want is ’something that will work.’ Since funding for hosting is such a bear, sooner or later economics dictate neat ideas have to mature into a sustainable base.
The web, now…that could be collectives.