Ren writes:
> > Chat rooms are already one of the most popular uses of cell phones in
> Japan.
> > Wireless IM, allowing realtime text chatting, will be even bigger.
> > Stupidity is ignoring this trend.
Kyle Barrow replies:
> McDonalds is the most popular restaurant but does this mean it is also the
> best restaurant? It does in terms of profitability but few would argue
that
> this also applies to quality as well.
"Cheap, good, soon - pick any two."
Market niches tend to be defined by holding one parameter
somewhere around par and striving for excellence along the
other two dimensions. A good customer experience is about
more than just quality of the goods or services as finally
delivered - unless you're buying a Rolls-Royce.
IM is cheap and convenient. As for quality - well, it works,
doesn't it?
> I'm not interested in building chat systems despite their popularity. My
> argument is text IM systems are a great leap backwards in terms of
> technology - burn your keitai's now and power up the pocket bell.
EVERY new platform-class has been a leap backward in terms of
technology. (*Software* technology, anyway.)
Minicomputers couldn't do what mainframes could. Later,
they caught up. Then came micros. Did they pick up where
minis left off? Hell, no! We lost ten years of progress in
software, almost overnight.
DOS? CP/M?? Primitive minicomputer operating systems.
And for years (up until the late 80s), most desktop applications
were written in assembly language. I turned up my nose at
this, but people I know who weren't so picky....well, some of
them own a couple houses, now, in nice neighborhoods.
Frontier roads are not paved with gold, they just offer
the possibility of gold at the end. And the fortunes are
made in a kind of ridiculous way: defining new de facto
standards by re-inventing wheels. It's pretty
hard to find an exception.
-m
leap@gol.com
www.idiom.com/~turner
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Fri Nov 17 08:45:32 2000