Product Failure, the Position You Never Want to Be in

So in an effort to understand as much as I can about the InterWebs, I am trying to look at as many products as I can.  While I can’t say I am some mysterious genius of words like “Drupal” or “Ruby on Rails” or “BigTables,”  I can say I have a good gut knowledge of what makes for exciting products, and what will kill you in the market.

This is a product that should never have been introduced in the market.  They need to go back to square one and ask why they introduced it in the first place.

Welcome to The Sponty!

Yup, a Calendar Program- But don’t we have lots of Calendar Programs already- so what makes this one unique?

So it is a social media Calendar?  Hmm, doesn’t that sort of exist?  In a multiplicity of places?  And if it doesn’t (or not in this exact form, with little graphics), is this not an easy change?  Or even a necessary one?  Who cares if it two-ish, or two?  And why yes, I realize it is being aimed me, while I am still at college:  From experience: We just check Facebook.  When we get a little older, we spread google calendars.  Yes I realize this is an attempt to merge the two ideas.  It does neither very well.  It would be faster to have someone write code that causes Google Calendars and Facebook Events to make babies.  The middle ground is totally too weird.

Further, Mobility: Hi!  (if I am not mistaken, although I am not registered for it on purpose, my school is one of the ones listed, I think, hard to tell), why would I want to tell about bailing this way- dumb because it is not mobile.  Actual students are attached to two things, a laptop, a school computer, and a phone.  And when you want to tell someone you are bailing without telling them in person, you text.  God Bless the Text Message. It’s discrete, and it gets the message through no matter how large a room or how loud or quiet one needs to be.  And it means you can send out someone else to deliver the bad news when you don’t show up.

However, all this means is that whomever built this, totally missed where people are getting their event calendars from (Facebook and Google Calendars), can’t figure out how to link it properly, and are building yet another tool that perhaps I just don’t want to check.

To Drive that point home: I had an engineer!!!! Check Facebook!!!! To Plan a Date!!! Because I one upped him in cool events that one hangs out in when one goes on a first date!!!! (Free events in Lincoln Center, booyah)

This is what makes products fail.  They didn’t really check in on user behavior, as it stands now, in order to really improve users lives.

I give this an official FAIL.  And trust me, you never want to here that.  I feel so bad too.  The icons are cute, and so is the idea of being bummy with your schedule and planning it with people, the ideal schedule if you are a college student with too much money/time on your hands.  If that’s the case though, why doesn’t it fit into the ecological system of what is already there?

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