[I love flickr by Ansy on Flickr]
We all have apps and products we use everyday. Some we probably couldn’t live without, in fact. Those, for me, represent all of the Google properties they have me nicely tied into. I tried to resist, but they are so darned useful! I also use stuff like Blinksale and Paypal and Backpack and Harvest and Skype, etc. If any of them go down, I start to panic.
Each one of them is essential and I rely on them to work well (and there are many more I rely on daily, too). I chose them, primarily, on how well they worked, the UI, the way they interoperated with my other apps, if they did the job well, and, well, sometimes because I got locked in (and the switching costs are so high that something spectacular would have to come along).
On the other hand, I have apps and services that are USEFUL, but they are also near and dear to my heart. I’ve talked about a few of them here already, but they include Flickr, Zipcar, Pandora, Blue Bottle Coffee, Blip.tv, Ma.gnolia, Wordpress, etc. I have a deeper, more emotional connection with these tools. Either I relate them to the people behind them, my network on them, my experiences with them and the way that they have not only solved day-to-day issues for me, but they’ve also enhanced my life. Most all of them, I have discovered through a strong recommendation from a friend (or, sometimes, several strong recommendations before I went, “Fine! I’ll try it!” Then I got hooked and became a superfan).
These are the thinks I use AND I heart.
If I go deeper into my daily dose of things I heart are the things that I didn’t ever pick up because of usefulness (although some of them have become incredibly useful), but because they intrigued me. When I use these apps or, in some cases, see these things, I feel warm and fuzzy and full of delight. I purely heart Twitter, Moo Cards, JPG Magazine, my Nabaztag…mostly completely irrationally beautiful or indulgent things that I can’t help but love. (notice how most of these are not online?)
If I was to draw the diagram of how these things fit in my life it would look like this:
There are three levels of emotional fervour here, but I think that ‘community’ is only possible when I HEART THIS enters the picture. That’s when you’ll see people starting to connect. And community, really, only happens when connections are made (on a more persistent basis). That being said, the “I USE THIS” camp of apps are incredibly essential…they don’t require “I HEART THIS”. They just have to work well. And, in actuality, if you try to add the emotional component, they start to feel a little silly (I’m not really jazzed about a financial management community, sorry…I don’t see how that helps me. It actually freaks me out a bit).
And, in my personal viewpoint, being in that middle ring of useful and lovable is probably the sweetspot for community as well as long-term feel-good life-time of warm and fuzzy customer loyalty.
February 14th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
reminds me of the Lovemarks idea. Have you heard of it?
From the Saatchi guys, and worth checking out.
February 15th, 2007 at 5:56 am
It’s not just around tools and software you get this. The irrational emotional attachment happens with consumer goods – look at Tivo. There’s a group of people who are so in love with Crown Royal whisky that they use the velvet bags to make cushion covers and dog coats. You’ll find the spread of attachment with almost all products – and it is not always related to anything the company does with the brand. But a team/company can increase the numbers of people who move out of the I use this to the I heart this by interacting with the customers – if you feel that they love you, you’ll love them more back.
February 15th, 2007 at 8:45 am
“That being said, the “I USE THIS” camp of apps are incredibly essential…they don’t require “I HEART THIS”. They just have to work well. And, in actuality, if you try to add the emotional component, they start to feel a little silly (I’m not really jazzed about a financial management community, sorry…I don’t see how that helps me. It actually freaks me out a bit).”
Everything we create can and should be cultivated with passion and love. It just depends upon how we perceive these things. I mean when I say “financial management”, it sounds like something dead and lifeless to me with no chance of having any sort of love associated with it. But if you break down what financial management is to it’s core (and get rid of all the rhetoric), you simplify it enough (or unburden it enough) to allow that passion and love to flow into it.
I mean if you could find something to help take care of your money for you, with little effort on your part, wouldn’t you love to have something like that, since it would free up your time to enjoy life more? I would. The main problem I see with a lot of software today though is that to make something better, people feel like they have to add features, when instead they should actually be removing things to simplify it as much as possible (similar to how 37 Signals creates their apps).
February 15th, 2007 at 9:08 am
Nollind, that comment is one of the smartest things I’ve read in a while. All of it. When I talk about passion, people can easily come up with a laundry list of things people don’t/won’t have passion for, but behind even the most basic tools there is often something people use those tools *for* that IS a source of passion. I won’t fall in love with a spreadsheet, but I can certainly get into flow using a spreadsheet to do some very cool modeling…
Cheers
February 15th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
Tara, I assume you’re tying Harvest and Blinksale into Basecamp, although you don’t specifically say so. I’m certainly a fan of your notion, and Basecamp is one of those “irrational” apps for me. I use it not only because of the benefits it offers me in my work, but also because it does it so well, I *want* to use it.
I’ve been looking for invoicing and time tracking solutions to mesh with Basecamp, given the nature of the work I do, but I haven’t yet come across anything that isn’t US-centric. I’m guessing Harvest will do that for me, so I’ll test it out. Invoicing is a more complex proposition given the *interesting* nature of the way sales tax collection needs to be done in Australia. For that I’m tied into using MYOB, which works just fine, but isn’t something that inspires passion. Far from it.
February 15th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I’m going crazy. Can we create a pharmaceutical pyramid with Xanax at the base and a round of buck shot at the top?
February 15th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
I hate Wordpress. Akismet has a terribly high false positive rate. Wordpress loves to turn a blank line into the end of tags, even when I’m using the raw code editor or using a desktop program that uses the API, giving you absolutely no control over what transformations it performs. I wish unspeakable things upon Wordpress.
Here is what people love irrationally: porn and TV shows online for free. That eclipses all the Web 2.0 darling apps by so much that you can’t ignore it. Slightly more technically adept users also love downloading movies and porn on BitTorrent, or downloading porn on other P2P services. Copyright infringement beats photo sharing and podcasts by such a ridiculous margin that if you’re going to think about users, what users want, what users do, etc. you should look at what typical users are actually doing on their computers instead of pretending like all applications are online photo sharing or wikis.
February 16th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Agree with a lot of it, there are some things you just can’t live without and some things that you probably wouldn’t need but offer you so much that you can’t put down.
I think eventually all our apps will be online and very much a lot of what i do and how i revolve my life is done on the internet. I share photos with flickr, chat with people on 43 things, phone on skype, keep track of events with upcoming and google calendar and store notes on strongspace; printing to pdf!.
Pretty much all my work is done digitally, and allows me the fastest method of crossing the globe to connect with similarly like minded people. Never a second is wasted and i think that’s the best thing, also it’s good to trees.
But i have to agree with you moo cards are just sooo coool!!!
February 16th, 2007 at 9:49 am
There’s no real reason why applications that are heavily data-driven and more or less consist of making a convenient interface to a database shouldn’t be hosted.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Yep. I even have the book.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Totally. I have this with lots of offline stuff, too. And stores. Like Sephora. Totally irrational.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:44 am
Yes. Absolutely to both of you. I was thinking of that Wesabe program…have you seen it? You sign up, then point it at your bank accounts…then SHARE your data with others so you have community financial planning together. *shudder* I don’t see how that helps me. The though of it freaks me out.
I guess that it’s broken the security needs rule.
But, yes…totally. I would LOVE to have something to help me take care of money better…it doesn’t have to be social, though, but it can make me love it.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Yeah…I don’t know of anything really. I’m only tying Harvest to Basecamp…Blinksale is working separately.
You may want to try Freshbooks. I’ve heard lots of good things. They area a Canadian company.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Porn is irrational.
But yes, people do love their BitTorrent. I used to totally love my Limewire and Kazaa before I moved to the states (which made me scared to download stuff).
February 17th, 2007 at 6:50 am
A nice way to catogorize experiences we heart is like this:
They tend to be useful, usable, desirable and sustainable. Flickr is all of the above.
February 18th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Have you seen iusethis?
http://osx.iusethis.com/
It has a little “i heart this” clicky for each product. You can just say, publicly, I use this and write a review, or you can go further and say, as you do, yes, I heart this!
Maybe these guys should support webapps too
February 20th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Really exceptional applications get the “I heart this”, and will encourage discussion and get the enduring attention of people both online and off. I think that it is too bad that there are more and more fantastic programs for people to use these days. It just seems like after a while the multitude of choices dilutes the purpose-interaction.
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:28 pm
I like this notion. I think of this as the customer satisfaction continuum where Satisfaction = I like you. Loyalty = I Love you. Affinity = I defend you. I think great communities have all 3 of these populations with frequent intrusions by those who “don’t know you.”
Just a thought. Given your topics, you might like my blog at http://www.communitygrouptherapy.com
sean
March 10th, 2007 at 3:52 am
I resonate with your observations.
I am inspired by Kevin Kelly’s explorations of our interactions with technology. He believes that the web “runs on love, not greed” and engages with his readers about the love of technology
My current tech love affair is with Diigo – a great tool that lets me highlight, annotate, tag, manage and share excerpts from around the web.
http://www.diigo.com
I’m all excited about Diigo, and tell about it to whomever I communicate with.
I use it, write about it, and spend long hours compiling feature requests and bug reports.
My brief review of Diigo:
http://eyalnow.wordpress.com/2007/03/08/permanently-highlight-and-annotate-text-on-any-webpage-with-diigo/
Kevin Kelly’s “The Web Runs on Love”:
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2002/01/09/kevinKellyTheWebRunsOnLoveNotGreed.html
Keving Kelly’s “The love of technology”:
http://www.kk.org/helpwanted/archives/000495.php