inessential by Brent Simmons

Tech Diversity

When Blogger came out, we all got on Blogger. When Flickr came out, we all got on Flickr. Later there was Twitter and Facebook, and we all got on.

(Okay. Not every single person, but you get my drift.)

In those days, for a thing to be important, for it to be a success, it had to get the attention of much of the internet.

It was a lot like TV used to be. There were just a few networks, and for a show to be a hit it had to have some significant percentage of viewers watching it.

Times have changed, and the internet is more mature and diverse. As my friend Kelly Guimont says, the internet is “sort of like TV” these days, and “you can have a successful show and not have half of America watching.”

Like Game of Thrones. It doesn’t have half of America watching it, but it’s still a success.

I argue that the same is true of apps and app categories: we’ve (finally!) entered a period of tech diversity, and Mastodon and Micro.blog and RSS readers and blogging systems and so on do not have to capture the attention of the entire internet to be successful and important.

In fact, those days are gone. TV changed, and so did the internet.