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by olefoo 4926 days ago
My theory is that organizational politics are what's driving many media companies to push their 'app' over their website.

Building native apps means that new people with new training need to be hired, a new team with a new manager needs to be formed. And once the budget is there for the new shiny; it must be spent, to do otherwise would be wasteful!

Never underestimate the power of a bureaucracy to make things more complex so that actors on the inside can justify their existence.
3 comments
rhizome 4926 days ago
Building native apps means that new people with new training need to be hired, a new team with a new manager needs to be formed.

I think it's more that existing employees want to amp up their resumes, and/or Mortgage-Driven Development. That the apps (and their CTAs) routinely suck tells me it's Mr. Learned-Rails-In-24hrs doing tech-lead.

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jeffool 4926 days ago
Man that's so painful to see. I imagine most here on HN are "ahead of the curve", but I envy those who work in an environment where that's more common. I worked at a news station and when we finally opened a Facebook page my boss couldn't understand when I asked why we were put entire stories on Facebook, rather than just linking and using Facebook login or the likes.

"Well the consultants recommend this way."

Of course it changed eventually, but man it's weird to see. Of course, the we often joked that a consultant's job was to say do B while we were doing A, then come back in six months and ask why we were doing B? A was obviously the way to go!

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drivebyacct2 4926 days ago
Yes, a hundred times, yes. I've watched a company build a Flex app two years ago. "Why not use Web tech". Then they (several years late) decided they needed to jump on the iOS bandwagon (this, at the point that their target market was surely starting to tip to Android majority), and within the last 4 months have started working on a web app to get Android, iOS and Windows 8. So, so, so much duplicated effort. I've watched a very similar pattern play out at a local startup company as well. Even more painfully they designed their own awkward middle-layer to try to abstract out differences between iOS and Android.

The problem is with higher-ups that are on the backside of trends but also think it needs to be a priority to do it soon... Okay.

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