[Ticket#: 2006040510000641] Re: [OT] Articles to read

[Steve Knox]

On Apr 6, 2006, at 6:36 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

>> Lynn Fredericks has said that inventive users like me don't really
>> exist, which does not inspire confidence.
>
> The reaction to Lynn's post has been curious.  I read the same  
> post, but I got a very different message.
>
> It didn't seem to me that he was claiming that people don't exist,  
> but merely that inventing a phrase to describe them which  
> ultimately turns out to be roughly synonymous with "everyone who  
> uses Rev" may not be as useful for strategic planning as existing  
> language other successful companies use to describe market segments  
> and personas.

Fair enough.  But it struck me that failure to properly identify a  
subset of users when trying to decide how to properly cater to this  
subset from a business standpoint is functionally equivalent to  
declaring them nonexistent. In other words, "We can't define this  
market, so we'll spend our time on the market we CAN identify".  That  
was the meaning I received.

What if IBM had said, "We can't really define potential PC users,  
because they could be anybody, and use them for anything, so let's  
just continue to build mainframes"?  What IBM did was build a  
machine, and adapted it later as the users adopted it.  When they saw  
that their sluggish bureaucratic structure couldn't adapt quickly  
enough to the market, it got out of the PC business.

What I'm saying is that maybe Rev should aim their strategy toward  
adaptability and away from tight market focus.

Lynn's post made it sound like they were going for tight market  
focus.  And if this is true, then they can't help but go the way of  
Big Blue in the software marketplace and place the primary focus on  
the enterprise.

This is not to say there isn't big money to be made servicing the  
enterprise market.  But where does that leave me?  And if I can't get  
the warm feeling that future upgrades won't be much less than full  
enterprise pricing, then I'm not sure I want to commit to this  
development platform.


I may find out that Rev Media will do what I want.  There has to be a  
way to turn off that background, though, because I need to have my  
app on the screen with my word processor.  I don't mind running in  
the player.  But if it's going to cost three hundred bucks to turn  
that backdrop off, then I have to look for something else.

Steve