Application reality check

ReadWriteWeb has a post on mobile social networking and some of the issues facing the companies trying to service that particular area. The post in itself is interesting, but the most interesting part is the bigger picture it relates to: The relevancy of services.

Given the almost no cost to develop a web application today combined with (until now at least) more or less easy access to money a lot of different web applications have seen the light and day. My claim is that 98 % of them are of little or no use at all and will die, when the last founder creditcard is maxed out.

There are two reasons for this.

The first one is that many of these applications don’t really solve a big problem for anyone. It may seem like they solve something for the developers themselves and their closest friends, but thats about it.

The second is that they are just plain too hard to use for normal non-geeky people. And this is where mobile social networking is a really good example. How many people besides people really into gadgets and tech and with too much time on their hands, do you know, who would spend time trying to configure, operate and let alone find friends using a mobile social network? I figured as much.

It’s perfectly cool that people are building applications, and it’s great that a lot of different things and concepts are being tested. But lets just not kidd ourselves into thinking that each and every one of them is a potential wonder.