Doing 1.0 well before moving on

Futurelab points me to this wonderful article about the dangers of tech fads. This author uncovers some of the hidden problems inherent in our desire to always get with the latest craze and also exposes the fact that, truly, we are unable to use Internet to its top potential.

I don't agree with a lot of what he says but you cannot help noticing that he has a point when he refers to irrelevant paraphernalia which get in the way of the apps usability - much like some brand generated sites which use a lot of shiny gadgets to mask the utter lack of content or relevance of the site itself.

I have recently asked a brand manager if he was not bothered that the average time spent on his site by a consumer was 45 seconds and that visits peaked during promotions and then dropped to almost 0. He said no, because the website was simply a tool to support his yearly promotion. But it was his only website :-(

I also think more and more that there is a point in what this guy says, namely: "The number of companies that chase the same advertising dollars as their only business model is a sure sign that we're at the peak of Bubble 2.0. It would be much more sustainable if companies aimed to create services that users valued enough to pay for." This is branded utility as first coined by the guys at Anomaly, I think, and it should be the way of the future, after all if we have clutter on TV what would prevent us from creating clutter on websites (I wonder if we will see some Internet regulatory body limiting the number of web banners on a page :-)

Anyway, read it cos it's food for thought