Paul Boutin is at it again, this time with his sights on MySpace (it’s what the kids are into these days) and YouTube.
But the focus on the collaborative nature of these sites has been nagging at me. Sites like Friendster and Blogger that promote sharing and friend-making have been around for years with nowhere near the mainstream success. I’ve got a different theory. YouTube and MySpace are runaway hits because they combine two attributes rarely found together in tech products. They’re easy to use, and they don’t tell you what to do.
There are two design requirements for technology meant for the masses. First, you need to automate all the techie parts so people can just press Play. To watch television online, I shouldn’t have to install extra video software, figure out my bandwidth setting (100K? 300K?), and sign up for an account with the player’s maker. Second, Web moguls shouldn’t presume to foresee what 100 million people will want to do with their site. I’m one of many who stopped using Google’s Orkut social network because its hardwired page designs made everyone look like they were there to find a date and/or a job.
The guys behind YouTube hit the sweet spot. Most important, they made it head-slappingly easy to publish and play video clips by handling the tricky parts automatically. Given up on BitTorrent because it feels like launching a mission to Mars? If you’ve sent an e-mail attachment, you’ve got the tech skills to publish on YouTube.
