The Everythingappification Blackhole Killing Modern Software

The added DMs to Spotify…

Background

Like most bad decisions with the internet, this starts with Facebook. Or more specifically Instagram. In 2011 a pretty novel app called Snapchat launched. You guys already know the story: stories, photos, video, everything ephemeral, only lasting 24 hours. By 2015 the platform hit 10 billion daily views across all content.

Shortly after that Instagram cloned the feature by adding stories to their own platform. At the time it was a risky decision. Directly taking features from other apps wasn’t a popular concept. Previously, Google had tried to build their own take on a Facebook-like platform with Google+ and that failed miserably. But for Instagram, the risk paid off. Within a few years Snapchat saw a steady decline in its number of users leading to their slow demise.

Fast forward to 2019 and the launch of TikTok. Again this is a story we already know the ending to, it took over the world. But yet again Instagram and Google were fast on their tail, releasing Reels and Shorts respectively. And again, while not completely killing TikTok, both ventures took off and did very well for their creators.

The Concern

Honestly, tech giants are always going to tech giant. Ruthless (and often anti-competitive) behavior will always be their game.

No, my issue lies with the random tech companies that think they can be the next “everything company”.

• Signal, You don’t need stories!
• Linkedin, You don’t need your own version of TikTok!
• WHO IS BUYING AND SELLING STOCKS IN CASH APP!!!
• I’m not even going to talk about Twitter…
• And last but not least Spotify needs to focus on paying their artists and not adding DMs and videos.

It all just comes off as tone deaf and an abandonment of what the app was meant to be about. It’s okay to have a really good app that does one thing really well.

The Pattern

It’s money, it’s always money.

When you have an app that does one thing exactly as it should be done eventually you reach market saturation. Your growth starts to slow down because everyone already has what they want.

When you are a leader at any level of an organization you are expected to continue growth. Or at the very least, appear to be pursuing growth. So replicating features known to be successful for other companies is an easy strategy to keep the growth going.

My Thoughts

Projects can “end”. An app can be “finished”. Software can transition from a build phase to a maintenance phase. It can all literally be whatever we want it to be, we made all of this.

This will never stop, at least with commercial software. I’ve had much better experiences with open source software. But, as long as we’re concerned about user counts and retention rate, software will continue to become more and more “same-y”.

But really though… who is buying and selling stocks in Cash App???