Next Killer App ?
This is the question that you would see Enterprenuers and sometimes great developers asking all the time : ). Well , i bet my two-cents on Service-Oriented Business Model. Sometime back i was talking to someone about human physicology involved in using operating-systems and softwares.Well in some application softwares and operating systems there are plethora of features that you almost never use in one session. I mean right now i know i won't be using Office and awful lot of other softwares installed on my system for may be next couple of days. So why not request services only when you need them.So we can safely assume that someday, somehow, someway you ( or your grand-children) would connect to internet ( might-be without having whole filthy Windows installed on your system :), only a network layer can work ) and requesting some service as in Spreadsheets, Calculators, Blogging Software, IDEs and etc). Yeah , yeah i know just said a bunch of crap.
Let me tell you a very short story. Couple of days back i was going to an airport. I had a flat tire when i was about to reach airport. I was like absolutely pissed. I didn't know what to do as it was very imperative for me to be at the airport in time ( Yes not even 'on-time' :) ). I started acting like insane and started calling different people. Obviously they told me to stay calm and look for someothing. NOW at that point in time i was ready to pay as much as possible to get away with the situation. Luckily a person passing by helped me. Now im not advocating about the services that should *only* help people in trouble :)( But its not bad to help people in trouble). But for one second i thought there should be some service that should help people in these kind of situations(A flat-tire is just one example) , atleast in my area. ( I grant you the permission to execute this idea and if you happen to be a millionaire then 20 : 80 :-) , just kidding....)
Another common pattern that i have found is simplicity of features in a product. Product should specificaly be made for one purpose. Software products should not be overwhelmed with useless features. I have seen software products going derailed only because they were supposed to carry whole lot of useless crap.Anyways i can see these kind of focussed-products doing well in the market. Brad Feld has pointed to some good article about 'Death of Killer Applications'. Key points are
- Simply try things out: We are seeing this every day with all the web 2.0 stuff that’s being created. The new approach – being used by many of our favorite web services – is build, release, test, iterate. Google has popularized the notion of “beta services” - when everything is “beta”, you’ve got a new paradigm with a short (days / weeks / one month) release cycle that can be quickly iterated on rather than a monolithic 12 - 18 months (or more) release cycle.
- Focus on the information context: This is a little harder to see in practice, but it’s all about “enabling the feedback loop between users and manufacturers.”