Pankaj wrote: > My question really was "whether I should be blamed > or the website"?
As a user, you're pretty safe from criticism on this list. No one is ever going to admit that a user should be blamed for anything. But even though the tryout/signup process for buzzword could be better than it is, I wouldn't call the application an 'epic failure'. I don't particularly care about online word processing but clearly they have a rabid fan base. Here's a question to consider. Is facilitating signup an inviolable goal? Does buzzword want more users? Can they handle the load? The support? What are their options? There are explicit throttles (invites, daily limits) that could hold down signups but people dislike being explicitly excluded. What if we looked at this as an implicit throttle that keeps out all but the really interested users? I remember a great little magic shop when I was in college that was in this little out-of-the-way street in a nowhere part of town. I had to buy a map of the city and make a special effort just to find it. I asked the kind old man who ran the shop one day why they were so remote. He could have set up in the mall, but then he would have had to deal with the least common denominator crowd. He got more loyal customers and fewer hassles right where he was. (Rob Gordan makes a similar observation about the location of Championship Vinyl in High Fidelity.) Back to buzzword: At this point in their growth is it more important to maintain the quality of their user base by weeding out the dilettantes? Is that what happened here? // jeff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=26142 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
