iDiz Incorporated

We live in a world bursting at the seams with new web sites. Each of these sites offers to transform our lives in unimaginable ways but very few maintain any lasting power after the hype has subsided.

Bing promised to change our searching experience but we quickly found that all the National Geographic style photos in the world couldn’t salvage the search engine from its inability to find what we were looking for. In contrast, Google’s sparse interface and focus on usable results continues to excel.

Or what about MySpace? It remains mildly successful but still can’t figure out how its bounty of half-baked features struggles to keep up with the newer, leaner and more refined Facebook.

Then there’s Twitter which offers nothing new (other than a 140 character limit), but rode atop a tsunami of hype that would eventually erode our initial skepticism. Twitter’s problem was that once the hype had died down and the product was asked to stand on its limited usefulness, usage began to taper off. Oh, and Twitter has yet to come up with a way to make money, let alone turn a profit.

If anything can be gleaned from the tales above, it’s that even the titans of the web are still struggling to get things right. Their billion dollar buffooneries reinforce some nuggets of wisdom we often choose to ignore:

• A million air fresheners can’t transform crap into a field of posies. If you’re not selling a good product, no amount of advertising will save you. (Bing)
• Doing everything poorly is no substitute for doing fewer things exceedingly well. (MySpace vs Facebook)
• Getting members is only half the battle. Develop a long-term sustainable plan for keeping them ahead of time – or you’ll be sorry! (Twitter)

It may seem that I’m being exceedingly hard on Bing, MySpace and Twitter. After all they’re relatively successful sites with some great potential when compared to the vast heaps of unsalvageable atrocities that pollute the web. Consider this an article targeted at those of you with potential – who ARE salvageable.