Even Flow..

When it comes to applications or websites for the masses, it's not about usability, it's about userbase. I noticed this yesterday, when a new friend of mine invited me to use facebook. Currently I'm using Hyves, a Dutch social network to keep in touch with friends and Linkedin for some business contacts. Since a few months I'm also familiar with vkontakte, a big Russian network, but I don't have my own account there. During my recent trip to St. Petersburg, I made some new friends and one asked me if I had a facebook account. I didn't have one yet, but I decided to get one, just to keep in contact with my international friends. I've been playing around with it for some time now and I must say that it's so much better than Hyves. Basically Hyves sucks; it's slow, ugly and very hairy in navigation. But why is it the biggest network in the Netherlands? Not because it's user friendly, but because everybody uses it. Obviously the nature of social networks contributes to this kind of behaviour; who wants to be on a network without any friends? But I think this statement is also true for a lot of other software. Since the days of byte-islands have passed a long time ago, it's necessary to interface, and so, using what everybody uses is key. This is true for file formats, but also for usage of applications in general. The people I know are mostly geeks or have some affinity with IT. For them it's easy to use something out of the ordinary, because they can manage (converting file formats, jumping through holes to get their linux machine hooked up to a mac, finding out how a different system works, etc), but for the masses the most important thing seems to be able to do what everybody does. Only to be able to ask a non geeky friend how things work. The geeky geeky friend wouldn't know it anyway; my usual response normally is "ooh, I don't know this windows stuff.. I use Linux.."