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Not in total agreement here. The web was just a tad simpler over a decade ago when Google 'launched' initially. In fact a lot of the web's titans like Ebay, Pa
by fjabre 17y ago
Not in total agreement here.
The web was just a tad simpler over a decade ago when Google 'launched' initially. In fact a lot of the web's titans like Ebay, Paypal, Google, Amazon etc.. were 'launched' during a different era if you will... It was called the 90s. I'm not so sure the same rules apply today. One should at least consider that things have changed in this regard.
Every other product Google's come out with since then was 'launched' in what we'd consider the 'traditional' way. Gmail was invites, Wave is invites.. Maps was released with a lot of fanfare.
What I do agree with is that immediate or front page media attention after launch is not indicative of the app's future success. In fact it seems the more hype things have in the beginning the less staying power they seem to have in the long run but I suppose it can go both ways and there is no one rule..
- Paton 17y agoAgreed.
- pxlpshr 17y agoCouldn't agree with you more. I agree with "release-early-iterate-often" however the notion of "never launch, just iterate" is bad advice IMO. This is also one of the few times I was surprised that more HN readers didn't poke holes in this blog post, but I think that's likely attributed to hacker ego in regard to "marketing" vs "engineering". A few thousands visitors does NOT mean you're doing things right, in fact it could be reinforcing poor judgement and a bad product. I've seen this happen countless times by founders who didn't know when to stop drinking their own kool-aid and meaningfully evaluate product holes because a handful of visitors swore it was the best thing since slice bread.