Anthony Bradley

My cohort Nick Gall posted on Web 2.0: Now With Fewer Features. I’m surprised he didn’t mention Gall’s Law. That is John Gall’s Law. I paraphrase it as, “every successful complex system started as a successful simple system.” When it comes to implementing social applications (see my previous post on social applications) you must never break John Gall’s Law. If you break it then you have done it wrong. Chances are your purpose is too broad (non-existent qualifies as too broad) so it requires too much functionality that can overburden participants and turn them off.

I like the idea that as social applications evolve they become simpler but I have a hard time swallowing it. If a social application initially breaks Gall’s law (but not too badly) then over the short term I can see a retrenchment in unused and unneeded functionality but over the long run as the community matures and the scope of the purpose expands, new functionality will creep in. I don’t see social applications as immune to the innovators dilemma. Those that manage them will need to recognize the challenge of fulfilling the needs of long time participants with the relative simplicity required to draw in new ones. I am already hearing people talk about how facebook and MySpace are too difficult and busy .