[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"After launching 37 different products over the last few years, I've had one go viral and almost all the others struggle to get any traction at all."

Imagine if these "products" were subject to the laws of product liability in the United States like real products sold there.

Why do software developers call websites or apps "products". Why not just call them "websites", "apps" or just "software".

For example,

"After creating 37 different websites and apps over the last few years, I've had one go viral and almost all the others struggle to get any traction at all."

Is "products" more descriptive. Is it some sort of signalling. Do developers want there software to be treated like tangible products.

[tsimionescu]

"product" just means "something you sell for money to customers". Saying "37 products" rather than "37 websites" makes it clear that each of these were business ventures, and that "going viral" means "finding many paying customers" not "finding many users curious about my fan site". Wikipedia is a site, for example, but not a product.

[nikolayasdf123]

agree. if those websites were like "Google" that literally indexes whole internet, or "New York Times" which is 175 years old, or "Bloomberg" which is biggest financial data provider — then those can be called products. website is just a surface to provide some real value, backed by really good design and execution, marketing and operations.

what we see instead is a myriad of half-backed, useless, un-maintained, poorly-executed, poorly-operated, poorly-designed solutions to non-existent problems, like shooting a gun into the sky and hoping it will land on a target.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Is social media a "product"

By "social media" I am referring to websites that only as intermediaries (middlemen) and fail to produce any content themselves

[WA]

> Imagine if these "products" were subject to the laws of product liability in the United States like real products sold there.

Software products are products and they come with liability. Maybe many bullshit apps can't cause any harm and don't really matter, but most evident is software in the medical space. Also, if you step outside of the US, software products in the EU must comply with the GDPR. If you fail to comply, you are held liable.