| > And those wanting to consume data, really just want the bare essentials: The data. I don't think they do. The average HN reader, probably; but not the average person. What they want is a well styled and usable webpage. Unfortunately, there aren't enough effective and talented UX designers (or stakeholders at companies with decent UX intuition). This leads to the current situation where the average person would be better served by bare essential data, even if it's not their preference, because it's still better than the kludgy UX average design a company is able to afford. {bad UX} << {raw data} < {good UX} The end run around this is what WordPress realized: create professional styles/themes and allow users to purchase and apply them. But that can't solve bad stakeholder taste. Which brings me back to Facebook, which I would argue succeeded because it standardized and mandated a professional UX. {data from people} + {professional, standardized UX} = {winning} You can dislike the original Facebook UX, but I don't think anyone would claim it was amateur level work. Which is what everyone's perception of MySpace/Geocities et al. was. |