I just saw Jakob Lodwick post on his tumblr blog about a sleepy thought he had. Well because I’m a follower (both of his tumblr blog and in general) I figured I’d write some sleepy thoughts of my own. Only I’m not sleepy, I’m sick. I ate some pasta tonight that isn’t agreeing with me. Anyway, onto my thoughts.
I’ll never understand what it is about some people that makes them feel that an idea they had is so great that anyone who disagrees with them on it must be an idiot and everyone will love it. I found one of these people earlier this week. So, you may have heard about this 3D email thing. It’s the worst idea ever, and I’d love to meet someone who disagrees (other than it’s creator of course). If you missed it, it’s basically like a mini second life where your emails are represented as people. I think I should first explain why I hate this product so much.
I hate anything that complicates a streamlined and simple process. I think we can all agree that there are few tasks simpler on your computer than checking your email. You tell you mail program (or web app) to check for new mail and it does, yay! and then you dig through crap to find the few you actually care about. This 3D mail thing makes this totally impractical. Instead of text in a neat list, you have 3D people walking around. I already hate SPAM, and I don’t need to see it represented as a fat man in a speedo.
To be honest, I’m not sure there is any market for this product. Usually there is a market for even the worst of products. However, this is software, that limits the number of potential users already. Most people who are going to use a 3rd party email app are people who know a little bit about computers, but if you knew anything about computers you wouldn’t use this app, you’d be too smart for it. This is software that kids will find lame and time consuming, and adults will find anti-productive and useless.
The majority of people use email for business. I have no real proof of this, but it just sounds true right? Think about it from all ages. A baby can’t use a computer, don’t be silly. A pre-teen kid either won’t be using email or will find other ways of communicating with friends like… in person. Teens use the phone and a few use email, but a lot find things like Facebook, MySpace and IM far more useful. Late teens and College age people use email, but if you are in college you are already at the point where you see email as a work too and a communication tool, you don’t want to turn it into some game, hopefully you won’t have time for that. Finally, adults have no use for this for obvious reasons. (this paragraph is shit)
Ok, so we know it’s useless, you might be wondering why I’m picking on the poor guy behind it. Well, mainly because he’s a tool. I sent an email after I first found out about this product to share my thoughts on it, I stated that I felt it was unneeded and I wondered why someone who actually make this product. To be fair I was being a bit of a prick, but at the time the product made me sick, it was a perfect example of a totally unneeded product.
So, I get an email back from Robert Savage (the guy behind it). He basically said I was immature, and I suppose he was right ( I know he was right). So I responded with a much more constructive response, though I kept it a little bit snarky. I said I think the idea is crap but the product seems to be of a good quality and I think that if the company put it’s focus on in a more needed area they would have great success. ( I was basically trying to apologize for being a prick, with out actually apologizing).
He missed this this, he then responded with some bullshit about his stats. He said I was wrong because he was number one on Digg. It was at this point I realized I had overestimated this guy. The title of the story on digg was “This is a joke right?” and the description was “Please, kill me now…”. with comments that ranged from sarcastic jabs at the product to one gay saying he’d rather have a donkey shit in his ear than be forced to use the product. This man was a blinded by his rising by his stats.
I’d rather have crappy traffic but a group regular readers who loved the content than a huge spike of people who are only there to see just how shitty your stuff is. I think we all would.
So, back to this prick. I replied to his email and told him about the details of the digg story. His last response to me was him saying that he is better than me and that I should check his bio on the site. I’ll leave you with what his bio said
“The founder and President of World Market Watch, Inc. is Robert Savage, the entrepreneur behind VisitorVille®, 1Jump®, and The Trading Floor®. Robert is known for doing what he believes in, and doing it with humor and passion.
When not coordinating the 40 people behind 3D Mailbox, he enjoys relaxing on one of his private islands, road biking up mountains, poring over Shakespeare’s plays, and playing the absurd Italian playboy Marcello Mastrantonioni on YouTube.” ;)
goodnight everybody
