What value isn’t

Matt Nolker, Thursday, June 18, 2009 @ 10:56 am

"I have tried Campfire, and I'm still not quite sure why people pay for it. I think you can take simplicity too far personally. It could be replicated on a weekend (As was done at google with huddlechat) so I don't see the value proposition there." Source

With apologies to Mike Godwin, I like to think of the following as Nolker's Law: As any technical discussion of a web 2.0 product grows longer, the probability of a claim that it can be built in a weekend approaches 1.

Inevitably, it's part of a larger claim: X is trivial to implement, therefore X is not valuable. You see variations on this argument everywhere: Netbooks are made of cheap components and yesterday's technology, therefore they're a fad. My 6 year old could paint that Rothko.

For the last time:

Cost: How expensive it is to build.
Value: How much your customers will pay for it.

They're not even close to the same thing.

Related posts:

1. Thinking about starting a SaaS or eCommerce business?
2. Agile Development and Testing: Unit or Montecarlo?
3. Software Development: Importance Doesn’t Always Equal Effort
4. Agile Development Improves ROI – But RFP Processes are Stuck in Waterfall.
5. Your SDLC or Your Product – You Decide

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