To Jeff Hocks comments:
focusing on social instead of personal means that these apps are looking at how to best create an app that is targeted “social network groups”. That’s just another way of saying they’re looking at the bottom line: numbers. If you consider instead creating an app that focuses on the personal experience, you’re better off. Create something that appeals to someone on a personal level and they’ll use it and share it, taking care of the social aspect of distribution and usage. You can’t satisfy all of the people all of the time, but if you focus on pleasing some of the people, they’ll spread the word.

I think with your website being about designing for the SOCIAL WEB, I’d surmize that you are talking maining about social web apps.

That being the case, you say… “people don’t have time to worry about what other people are doing, and will only use software that benefits them personally at every step”.

Oh really? I’d argue that… the ONLY REASON people use social web apps, is to keep track of what other people are doing… Twitter, facebook, etc.. It’s 100% about keeping track of who’s doing what.

You have a valid point about tagging. People won’t tag, and correctly tag, unless it benefits them in some way. But what does this have to do with, “Focus on social instead of personal”? I’ve said this over and over to myself and I have no idea what it means, or how it relates to tagging or how tagging relates to reasons why web apps fail. I’m lost in a sea of web 2.0 buzz words.

Honestly, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say this entire post could have been machine written by just regurgitating buzz words and phrases from related blog posts and sewing them together in some fuzzy logic way. Really, if that’s what this is, then kudos!

Problem #2: They try to solve too many problems
Although we have seen that successful companies have focused on one activity, I believe they dedicated themselves to one of two concentrations:

1) Target audience – Many Companies began by first targeting to a particular niche audience. MySpace (musicians), Facebook (College students), and Ebay (collectors) started out dominating a certain group. Their audience focus allowed them to rapidly increase their user base in their initial stages. Dedicating to a audience is still a viable way to establish market share in the web application space.

2) User Experience – Not only did these companies focus on one activity, they overcame an area of the web that has existed for years. How? By vastly improving the user experience: Flickr (drag & drop organization and tagging), Google Maps (dynamic loading of map graphics), Amazon (shoppers who bought this book also bought..), Gmail (ease of searching and archiving). I believe that Remember the Milk is doing this right now with the common to do list. The single focus is dedicated to improving the user experience of what’s been around for years.

I love your focus on users and improving / empower user’s lives. So many new websites miss this point and jump straight to buzz words and social value (web2.0, ajax, tagging etc). I love how each of your 7 points are clearly defined, each containing so much value. Thank you so much for the thoughtful post. Bookmarking this and sending it to friends. It’s a great source when designing that next web product. I’ll be back.

Warm Regards,
Tina
ThinkSimpleNow.com ~ Clarity & Happiness