Web Strategy Micksup

google maps and tennis courts
Originally uploaded by bigmick

If your first goal when building a web apps isn’t ‘To Change The World’, then take a deep breath and start again. You’re about to start working really really hard for really really risky returns, so it’s worth taking some time to think about it. Write it down somewhere. On your blog, wiki or whiteboard.

“We are doing this to change the world”

There are lots of reasons to do this.

1. It makes you focus on doing something unique. If your idea is to build a solitaire game, then nothing is going to change. Nothing new is going to be created.

2. It makes you want to do something bigger. Not that all good things, or things that change the world have to be mega, but normally it takes as much time to do something big as little, so triple that goal.

3. It makes you think about change. This includes both what can you do to bring about change, but also that in building a new web app you have to be aware that change has to happen. A long list of great technologies died because the developers didn’t think about how peoples behaviours would have to change.

4. It’s measurable. We’ve had maps for years and I could have found the location of the tennis courts easily, but as they say ‘the map is not the territory’. So how does Google Maps change things. I can go to Satellite view and actually see that they are tennis courts. “Ahaa!” Google Maps (and who they bought) changed things. It made the world different in a very clear and measurable way.

I’m sure there is more, but my suggestion for today’s reflection for us in web app world, forget lines of code, sales and community and think off into the future and imagine someone sitting at their computer and because of what you are building the world changes.

For the better of course.

Popularity: 22% [?]