12.04.06
No Wonder They’re Confused
Over at the normally good reading at Download Squad, they’ve posted seven rules for web 2.0 startups. Which seems like a good idea, until you get to this cute juxtaposition:
“3. Tell me what it is, not what’s inside: I don’t care whether your service is powered by Ruby on Rails, .NET, AJAX, REST, or Vegemite, so don’t waste another breath on it. Tell me what it does and why I want to use it, and keep the nerdy chest-thumping on your Developers page.”
followed shortly by:
“6. APIs!: Speaking of playing with others: the technical details shouldn’t be on the front page, but they should be there. The gold standard of Web 2.0 is a well-documented interface that lets geeky users and other Web 2.0 developers get at all of your site’s data and roll it into their own desktops, web sites, and services in a variety of ways. Bonus points for nailing the trifecta: XML, JSON, and YAML.”
… so to paraphrase, avoid at all costs talking about the technology, you nerds! On the other hand, I demand APIs based on a random collection of buzzcronyms! (for those wondering, apparently the trifecta requires the use of two (count em) markup languages, XML and YAML. For the life of me, I’m struggling to understand why you would need both)
I think as far as rules for startups go, I would tend to agree with the Kevin Rose argument: paraphrasing, the first step is to build a cool website.