If one thing is clear about the industry is that it knows no shortage of applications and services of any kind. Seemingly anything and everything has been invented, developed, put to use and copycatted around. It’s no use to even attempt to list the kinds of applications in existence. They’re vast and endless.
In that rich and abundant environment any user can be expected to find a suitable service to his liking. Whatever he might think of, somebody inventive has already come up with. Any wish the user might express has already been expressed by thousands of others and incorporated into the product as feedback. Sounds like an idyll. A rich environment full of perfect products with no wishes left to fulfill.
And just to confirm that conclusion let's speak about this with any active user of software. To our undisguised surprise they will respond with that blatant straightforwardness that leaves no doubt of its sincerity. They'll say all of the software sucks.
It's not a big surprise really. It's something every one of us can confirm with our very own personal experience. Mailing software which doesn't allow multiple aliases for a single mail box. Price search sites where you can't filter goods with fine criteria. Social networks which don't give a damn about your privacy. Online communities run by authoritarian moderators who forbid everything, or vice versa, by moderators who don't care about well-being of the community and allow anything to take place. Online auctions that put so many restrictions people become afraid to use them. Various content providers that lay ownership claim on any byte submitted and transmitted through their servers. Each of us has a long and weary list of complaints about places we visit and the services we use. The question that remains open is "Why".
An obvious explanation that we all feel subconsciously, is that owners of the services just don't care about the satisfaction of the users. Market dominance can often reassure them they don't have to care. Lack of options makes the users tolerate their faults. Sometimes it is clueless managers who don't understand the field they're working in. Often however vast competition exists but sadly copies directly their model product with all of their flaws. Apparently they believe their feature set is a key to success completely missing the point that the only reason that company knew success is because it entered an empty market long ago and success came naturally, which wouldn't have happened today.
Even newly launched startups are no exception. For the larger part they fail to deliver so much wanted and needed improvement. In most cases it is because they base their product on a weird idea and an attempt to look differently rather than embrace the real needs of their users and their real feedback and innovate in the right direction. Quite often the only motivation of startups founders is to strike rich so they couldn't care less about their users. And of course investors often have a saying in where to wheel the product and they'd only think in terms of return on their investment not in satisfying some abstract users who don't even fit as a variable into their success formula.
Whatever the reason may be, stagnation in the software market and low user satisfaction is the reality we've all accustomed to. But the point of this article is not to growl about the things we can't change (or can?). It is to emphasize three important conclusions almost everybody working in the industry is missing.
The first concerns many enthusiastic developers and aspiring entrepreneurs. It is a false illusion that everything has been invented, all niches have been taken and all innovation has already occurred. Nothing could be more wrong. Niches are filled indeed but often they are filled with crap not quality products. There is innovation waiting to happen in just every corner of the industry. There are millions of users waiting for that innovation to finally come. And this is where you can jump in and make a difference.
The second point concerns product owners and new entrepreneurs. Low satisfaction makes users to be in perpetual search for better alternatives that will deliver improvement and innovation. Even if it is often a passive search, it only takes for a new product to come into their sensor range. They'll readily try it out and if satisfied they'll jump the ship before you notice it. Don't count on the loyalty of your users for they know you don't care about them. Don't be deceived by your market share for it can easily drop to nothing within one year or two, we've all seen examples in the last years. And this is a marvelous situation for new players because they can count on getting some users even before they launch. After all it only takes to, you know, suck less than competition for the users to come. Your loss is their win. Remember that.
And the last point should be taken seriously by current leaders of the market. There are many talented developers out there who are working day and night on their new great products. At this very moment there are many thousands sitting in front of their computers, hitting the keyboard and shaping the next masterpiece software. They watch for the holes in the current offerings and don't miss any flaws of the current market leaders. And they turn them into marketing advantage and unique selling points of their upcoming products. Have you noticed how many willing to write their own social network "like Facebook, only better"? Not that many will succeed but just realize how many are trying. And that is what matters. As TechCrunch eloquently put it in Generation make:
"We are a generation of makers. A generation of creators. [...] Unlike previous generations, if we’re on the web or at a store and something we want doesn’t exist, our first thought is not "why?" but simply that maybe we should create it ourselves."
One day you may discover you're not alone in your niche anymore and you're not even the best at what you do. The table can turn overnight. Don't count on your competition being weak and you being unbeatable. Because neither is.
