Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Tim Frietas

(And Why Every Online Community Stops Being Fun)

There’s a saying that there’s only seven stories in the whole world and each book or movie or stage drama is essentially a variation of each of them at its heart.

For example, compare the description of “Overcoming the Monster” to nearly every superhero movie from the last 20 years:

The protagonist sets out to defeat an antagonistic force (often evil) which threatens the protagonist and/or protagonist’s homeland.

Nearly every Marvel and DC movie suddenly seem a bit similar, don’t they?

In software the equivalent of the story is the app — a self-contained vessel that holds an experience for the end user. I posit the same general rule that applies to stories is true for applications, except there are only three types of applications:

Apps that help users make money (or store value)
Apps that help users save time
Apps that help users communicate

Superb apps can be really good at two of these things, but you’ll almost never see an app that can do all three well (if you do, it is a virtually guaranteed billion dollar empire — and it probably already exists).

The non-conjoined triangle of limited application possibilities

Additionally, apps focused on the left side of this triangle tend to be based in enterprise (work) and apps biased towards the right tend to be consumer-facing (fun).

This model helps explain why companies like SalesForce, Craigslist and eBay that seem byzantine by modern web standards still print money: they were the first to a rare “trifecta” in each of their respective markets (CRM SaaS, a replacement for local classifieds, and online auctions, respectively), saving their users time, helping them communicate and making them money in the process.

But we’re not in 1848…err…1997 anymore; lots of claims have been staked and more commonly you will see companies attempt to diversify to hit all three points of the triangle as they grow.

Google started with a clear value over other search engines: it saved users time. No longer did you have to guess which page was the most authoritative on a subject: Google ranked them for you, and delivered results quickly. It would be another two years before Google introduced AdWords (to help a different cohort of users — advertisers — make money). And it would be four years after that before Google pivoted to helping users truly communicate better with Gmail.

Evolution of Google’s product focus

For Google the shift to help communicate wasn’t pure altruism, but part of their business model: for years Google specifically targeted ads based on the contents of your inbox. Gmail was a gold mine for user targeting, serving as a flywheel to power the other legs of their business. They’ve stopped doing it, but they’ve added so much sponsored content to a general search you have to go below the fold to even find the first organic result for many searches:

The GIF wherein I search for a dog crate and rage scroll through sponsored bullshit to get to real results

This model, then, also helps explain why venture capital is so important to emerging technology companies: it can take years to nail down more than one leg of the triangle — especially the one that VCs generally care about most (*cough: bottom left*).

It also explains why companies that don’t sell a tangible product almost invariably become advertising companies and why apps (especially ones based on communities and media) that start off as pure fun start to feel like work. For media companies there’s no other leg of the triangle to run to, as saving time is antithetical to their core mission of keeping your attention for as long as possible. Reed Hastings recently went on record saying the biggest competitor to Netflix is sleep. †

† Note: Netflix actually collects revenue from its users, which is totally different; I’m merely quoting Reed to make a point. If you want me to write the article on how Netflix fits into all this, just let me know. 🙂

Companies like Twitter and Snapchat started off focused on the right leg of the triangle and are still struggling to turn a profit as they attempt to make money for one cohort at the expense of their core audience. Advertising is the polar opposite of fun and is pure work for users. (When was the last time you sat through a Snapchat ad and enjoyed it?)

Media-first apps that had no clear revenue plan† (or always planned to “turn on ads when they have to”) all end up looking like this:

Twitter is struggling to stay fun, as it fractures into divisive subcultures while being abused by the POTUS to subvert “fake news”. Snapchat’s user growth is stalling, in part because they have never been great at telling advertisers how effective their ads are but also because Instagram is eating their lunch.

Instagram has become decidedly less fun, by the way.

†(The irony is also not lost on me that Medium is also struggling with how to generate revenue while staying as close to their original product vision as possible.)

What’s the most fun (but free) app you have right on your phone right now? For me it is probably HQ. Are you excited for a sponsored question that looks something like this?:

Which of the following soft drinks was first introduced nationally at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition?

a) Pepsi

b) Coca-cola

c) Dr Pepper

[The answer is c) and poor Scott Rogowsky will have to dance around talking about how the question is sponsored by Dr Pepper while wisecracking that Dr Pepper does not in fact contain prune juice.]

I’m not excited. Sounds like work, not fun.

Without an ace up its sleeve, HQ, like virtually every media app in the digital age, is on a collision course with being less fun. Or charging users for extra lives, inherently making the game unfair (and less fun). Or selling themselves to some bigger fish who will make it less fun or shut it down if they can’t figure it out: there’s only three apps in the entire world and unless you think deeply about revenue from the beginning, being fun and free is on the other side of the triangle from being profitable.

Do you hate my guts right now? Don’t! Really!

I want to see this change and am looking for the right team to make communication fun and sustainable. Find me on Twitter, drop me a line and let’s chat!

There are only three apps in the entire world was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are only three apps in the entire world

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