Users are funny - few features are too few, but many features are to many. I slowly understand, how microsoft office became such are bloatware.
More?
During my study in 2006/2007 I developed a Software for short messaging via web and mobile phone. I found, that most people are using their mobiles for the following reasons: Chat, making appointments and changing appointments. Therefore I thought features to support the following issues would be useful:
- short messages (You'll keep short while you're on your way.)
- group functions(One message for all of your friends.)
- location functions (Where's that cool party?)
- schedule (when will we meet?)
- Information about your situation (Look - it's so nice here...)
I had built a prototype, but it turns out, that it's too complicated. None of my test users used one the 'higher' features.
Or less?
Then came twitter with an extremely limited 140 character messages service. It became popular, just because it was so focused, with only one main feature.
Or what?
After a while, the users got bored and soon new features around twitter appeared: Photo upload (twitpic), post links (tinyurl) and a few days ago I found a service for posting music files. Now Don Reisinger demanded on TechChrunch ("
Why Twitter Needs to Do More") group functions. Great - then the actual state is similar to what I had one and a half year ago, only more complicated.
What's the lesson to learn from that?
