Wittgenstein and Google Wave / Buzz / Plus

Obviously enough, the projects of Google Wave, Buzz and Plus ended in a grand failure, although Plus seems to be not officially closed yet. The question arises why Google with all their resources and user base could not “push” such projects. If the reluctance to understand, you can say "it does not work" or "no one needs it," while making a face of excellence (this is important), and close the question. But if you think about it, we will see that in something similar projects Google Docs, Twitter and Facebook, respectively (here is irony), it is quite a bloom and smell. Still works, still need. So what's the trick?

Let us try to look at it from the point of view of the philosophy of the late Wittgenstein , nothing less. Namely, based on the principle of "the use of language." I will illustrate with an example. A year in 2006 or 2007, Californian friends showed me Twitter. I carefully looked cartoons explaining the meaning of the project. Feeling - garbage. Just in case, I took my favorite username , poked it back and forth. Conclusion: complete garbage. Nobody needs that. What is the point of this at all? And, if you think about it, I was absolutely right. People who are interested in me did not write anything to Twitter at that time. How to use twitter case law I did not see. Or, in other words, a word that nobody uses does not make sense. This is a tree that fell in a forest where nobody is there . And somewhere year 2009 started. Especially with the advent of the smartphone in 2010. Nefig do - read Twitter. Gradually, everything became overgrown with some sort of etiquette and tradition, and the words on Twitter, or even silence, acquired a lot of meaning. I emphasize once again that the meaning arose precedent in the process of use.

And now we will look at how developers and management look at such communication services. Very simple. A service is such a set of features that should work under such a load. If there are no users, we will catch them up, any manager in a large Internet company will tell you. Alas, the new user will not see any sense in the new service. Use-meaning-use is like money-goods-money. If you print a quadrillion Eurasian MNT tomorrow, this paper will not acquire value, and no Eurasian empire (with the currency of Tugrik) will arise. But if you unwind gradually (like a dollar, for example), it can arise. The paper is the same, but the meaning is completely different.

So it turns out that Twitter and Facebook, gradually unwinding from some small interested audience (cyclists and Harvard students) make sense, and Buzz and Plus do not. But big companies are not ready to mess with any cyclists out there, are they? So, some startups have a great future.