Was this meant to be funny or demonstrate a lot of personality? (as in: you will endure all this rough English because the message is so important). I am probably not getting the humor but I found it an obnoxious read. All this to tell you "Don't be boring - do something different"? I could imagine a much better article on that topic.
I am reminded of "Thag the Caveman" asking for help on network printing or some such thing, or perhaps of the "Hulk Feminist" tweeter. Sometimes, bad form is a form. Lighten up?
I guess the point is to be memorable to at least a small group of people, rather than correct and bland and forgotten by all.
One thing this blog post highlights strongly, albeit accidentally, is that if you are going to have a personality it is important to have the right personality for your market. Having the wrong personality can set you back in ways ranging from not being taken seriously- and therefore having a greater hill to climb, to being offensive- and therefore being locked out of your market/audience.
This blog post reads closer to something that I expect to see on a joke or casual chat forum than something I expect to see on a VC's blog.
Having said that, I also think the message is spot-on. In particular, I thought the advice under "How not be boring" was clear, simple, and compelling.
This one being so much more successful illustrates one of three things: (1) the personality helped or (2) people think the content in this post is more interesting than that one was or (3) pg fixed the problem that makes it harder for items to reach the front page if they're submitted too early in the morning Pacific time.
The reason it illustrated the hazards of a "wrong personality" not because it harmed Fred's particular brand, but because it was so startling that the reader can immediately see how having a "wrong personality" can have a lasting impact. This isn't a problem for Fred (except possibly for new readers), but could be for someone who is still trying to build his brand.
In other words, if this were the personality of the blog (or, say, if Zed Shaw's online personality were the personality of the blog), online readers would have a different impression of Fred Wilson the VC.
This one being so much more successful
Only if the sole purpose of the blog was to get attention and create discussion as to the writing style of the blog.
No. But I would venture that I wouldn't necessarily choose to measure the success of a blog by its upvotes on HN. Especially when, as it was when I first commented, that the majority of comments were about the writing style and were negative.
It's supposed to be an online version of Grimlock from Transformers. He's part of a clan or robots that all talk in third person and have broken English.
That being said, I thought it was a thoughtful read with good points, and absolutely hilarious. I've spread it to 5 of my start-up friends who would get the Transformers reference already.
People love personality in products, like the MailChimp helping you along when creating your email newsletter, or w00ts hilarious product descriptions. Wufoo even does this by having a t-rex be the log in button and a title tag that says "RARRR!"
Is it really enjoyable? You are begging the question. Things or people may have a distinct personality, but I don't enjoy bad personalities, even if I remember them.
It seems like most successful things will not be enjoyed by everyone, hence the common thought that if everyone likes what you are doing something is probably wrong.
This was the most helpful article I found on HN this week. Not joking either, I'm mucking about with product design for which this was spot on. And it was performed (I find no better word) with personality.
I liked "EVERYONE CARE AND TALK ABOUT PRODUCT YOU WIN". Kind of reminds me of when ma kid brother had literally droped out of school and we as a family seemed to care and talk about him now he just graduated from Uni. He won and we won.
I think Spolsky does this best, even though I can't quite pin down how.
His company doesn't have a trendy name, he doesn't really have a gimmick (other than being a clear and prolific and useful writer, which is not a gimmick), but he's reasonably celebrated.
In the context of this "don't just be useful, have personality" idea, what's his personality? It must exist, because the following that he's built points to it, but I can't identify it directly, sort of like a marketer who you've heard great things about but don't know where. (Obligatory xkcd comic link to be posted by someone else.)
Note: I'm not saying he has no personality, just that I can't point out what makes it come to the forefront, because it's subtle. I love the guy, but don't know why I love his site so much more than, say, jwz's. Maybe it's the implied profitability of his software business, versus the "I sell beer because I hate computers" message?
Joel is funny. not comically funny, but enjoyably funny, such that you can almost always get through a post or interview or whatever without feeling labored.
Joel always brings in metaphors or stories from worlds outside development (only sometimes funny). Many stories still go back to the Army, or his first job at the bread factory, but the recurring stories make you feel like you know him, you know his past, his experience at Microsoft. You know his whole personality through his vast writing, and it's all masked in "clear and prolific and useful" writing.
You feel like he's an expert, because you didn't notice that he's always injecting personality, where, an example from AVC's comments is Mailchimp, who makes their entire brand about a single chimp.
It will be hard for Fog Creek to keep their brand after Joel leaves, but it won't be hard for Mailchimp
Yes, Joel is very funny, but not in an overbearing, obvious way.
In an old essay on software specs [1] he states: one of the easiest ways to be funny is to be specific when it's not called for
I've noticed that he does this a lot. All the time. Sometimes too much, like in hginit.com, which I did not find that amusing. But most of the time he is spot on.
"I like developers, and letting PHBs put devs in a dungeon is bad"? More to it, but that seems to be a recurring theme in Joel's writing.
He makes things that explicitly help developers, whether its a bug tracking system, or a Q&A board for devs. In one column he says that a small software company or startup manager's job is to provide the illusion that developing software is all there is to do (all that matters).
I knew it had to be good to be given a guest post slot, but I just couldn't understand the purpose of the format. Now that I know what a grimlock is, the writing style makes perfect sense.
Just as an alternative point of view, I thought it was quite clear and concise, and made its point strongly. More so than a typical long-prose essay may have done.
It would probably be more readable with the ALL CAPS, but then it would lose its humor.
People like a degree of anthropomorphism in, well, anything. But when designing things with personality, keep in mind that there's, what I call, a valley of creepiness which happens when you add too much realism. E.g. it's probably okay to have a coffee-machine that kind of looks like an animal, but it's not okay to have that coffee-machine defecate perfectly realistic pieces of shit on your carpet.
I like the occasional "common sense" article as much as the next guy, but this was a little bit too obvious, vague, and uninformative. Make a product that is interesting that has meaning and people like. Wow, really? Wait, I've got a better strategy, that is even more straight to the point: Make money, get rich.
Making something that people care about is a goal, not a strategy.
I cannot begin to express how much this made me think. In preparation for my own launch coming up, I'm looking at it and wondering why I've spent so much time of Minimum Viable Product when the personality just won't cut it. The guys at Hipmunk posted something to this affect a while ago, but it didn't have the weight of this.
But how does one launch a product with a personality? As a developer, not a designer, I'm at a loss...
I think it has to develop. You can't slap it on like it's a feature, because authenticity is one of the most important components of personality/voice.
I basically try to avoid squashing the personality. Just by not thinking like a PHB, or a corporate manager, I seem to avoid being bland. And I try to have fun as I'm developing something.
Also, its better to be personal than impersonal (contrary to what I was taught about writing essays).
Was it something I wrote, I presume? I'd love to know what and how to improve it. I'm working on an e-book about Making Something People Love based on a class I've been teaching that hits a lot of what was in this post.
Totally love this article! Your company and your product have to BE ABOUT SOMETHING!!! Why should people care about you as opposed to the hundred of apps that launch everyday? You have to represent an idea. You have to represent possibilities.
How does this apply to Google search, Yahoo, Facebook, Dell, Asus, Intel, StackOverflow, Hacker News, Google News, YouTube, Kingston Memoriy, Seagate, Cisco, Verizon Superpages, C|Net, Twitter, FourSquare?
