Fred Wilson says that convenience beats quality. In his post he is talking about video and photography. The amazing story of the limited featured Flip Camera, which captured 13% share of the video camera market in its first year on sale, bears testimony to this truism.
I think this maxim, that convenience beats quality, is true not just for video and photography, but also for most consumer internet services. It is one of the reasons that many of the apps that have been most successful on Facebook have been lightweight “just for fun” apps:
Some corollaries of this are:
1. The best product is neither necessary nor sufficient
2. Distribution can be more important than functionality
3. Lightweight interactions beat more involved interactions
4. Defaults matter as many people won’t change them
5. Use implicit information whenever you can to avoid asking users for data.
Do readers agree that convenience beats quality? If so, what are other corollaries?
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