Ask Slashdot: Why Do Popular Websites Add New Features So Sparingly? 190
dryriver writes: If you are a user of a popular professional desktop software program, it is not uncommon for that program to get anywhere from 5 to 20 major or minor new features and functions about once a year to stay desirable and competitive. But it seems that hugely popular internet-based sites and services like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Google Search, Gmail, Outlook, WhatsApp, Telegram and others get major new features/changes much, much slower than desktop software. Quite often you'll come across a barrage of breathless news articles that say "Popular Internet Service X will add Y feature starting from April 1st." It is often one single and very obvious feature or functionality being added that people have wanted for years, not a cluster of 5 or 10 funky new functions at the same time.
Why is this the case? How is it that desktop software with just a few hundred thousand users and no more than a few dozen coders working can add 5 to 20 major new functions in just one year, and do this year after year, but a major internet-based service with tens or hundreds of millions of users and presumably hundreds or thousands of techies working behind the curtain keeps everyone waiting three years or longer to build a much requested feature into the system, and then only rolls out that one desired feature to great fanfare as if it is a huge achievement? Is it really that much harder to code major new features into an internet/cloud service, versus coding major new features into desktop software; or is this a deliberate business model that has become popular?
Why is this the case? How is it that desktop software with just a few hundred thousand users and no more than a few dozen coders working can add 5 to 20 major new functions in just one year, and do this year after year, but a major internet-based service with tens or hundreds of millions of users and presumably hundreds or thousands of techies working behind the curtain keeps everyone waiting three years or longer to build a much requested feature into the system, and then only rolls out that one desired feature to great fanfare as if it is a huge achievement? Is it really that much harder to code major new features into an internet/cloud service, versus coding major new features into desktop software; or is this a deliberate business model that has become popular?
Good one, there! (Score:5, Funny)
They tried. (Score:4, Informative)
After 3 years of beta testing and consistently being panned by users, the new owners tried to force it onto users, it went so bad that users staged a boycott to get it rolled back.
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Yes, but Slashdot Beta led directly to the development of the Slashdot app for iOS and Android, which is by far the best way to use this site. The only problem is, you need to get a special code to install it. If you want one, DM me your info and I'l hook you up.
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Wait, Slashdot has DMs??
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Wait, they finally came up with a decent interface and it's a secret? Typical slashdot, I thought things were supposed to be different now. Hook me up yo
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Sorry, the promo code system isn't working at the moment. Call the Slashdot 800-number help line and say "secret interface" at the prompt and one of the Customer Experience Concierges will help you.
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Slashdot, help? hahahahahahaha
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It was so bad that alternative slashdots were created. At least one is still running. I think...
Re:They tried. (Score:5, Informative)
https://soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org] an interesting fork of the old slashcode with some weird users.
Interesting changes include Unicode support, more ways to moderate including the disagree and touche mods that don't affect the score or karma. Being able to mod in discussions that you've commented in, with some exceptions, so you can mod someone and then tell them why and I'm sure some other interesting changes.
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And the selection of articles they have seems to be more towards tech, and less towards SJW / politics.
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And every time I hear "hashtag" it makes me want to vomit.
OctothorpeWhatHeSaid
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Ooh, that was sharp!
Re: They tried. (Score:2)
Apk has the answer for that - really (Score:2)
Most of the time, you can kill automatic updates by adding a hosts file entry setting updates.steam.com or whatever to 127.0.0.1. You have to find the right hostname for each software you want to block updates on.
That's what I was thinking. Classic forever (Score:2)
Slashdot Beta is exactly what I thought of. Then they rolled out their really crappy "mobile" version. Fortunately they have the "use classic" link so we can keep using the design that works well.
Re: Good one, there! (Score:2)
Yes, I too took a while getting used to the idea before creating an account!
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How much cash do you get for letting the voices in your head type? Seems like the return on that must be pretty poor. It's not like anyone ever paid for a hosts file manager.
Ain't broke. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't fuck with it.
whole bunch of people need to learn that...
Re:Ain't broke. (Score:4, Insightful)
The smart and capable ones already do. The others are incapable of learning and can only be hounded out of the profession they serve so badly. The sooner, the better.
Re:Ain't broke. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually is is more complex then that.
Factor 1: Money, A website will normally make its money by the number of people using the site. Vs an Application that needs people to buy it.
So to get more money out of the customer you make an app and add new features they may or may not need, just so people will pay for the upgrade.
Factor 2: You deploy to everyone. A feature will normally be a trade off of some sort. So you can't use a website at version 3 while someone else uses version 2 unless you have a complex set of compatibility layers going on. Which in itself causes probable because version 3 has 4 feature that version 2 doesn't and the guy on version 2 really wants that one feature added to his version. However the others on version two doesn't. For the application owner if they are on version 2 they can wait for version 4 which fixes the problem in version 3 that they didn't like.
Factor 3: Wider audience. Just as Slashdot beta has such a backlash, when there is a big audience the minority is bigger and has a much louder voice.
If you have 100 users 1% hates the upgrade you get one annoyed customer which you can deal with. If you have 1,000,000 customers then that 1% would be 10,000 annoyed customers, who will then gang up and be a real force to recon with. Vs not changing stuff then the people who want new stuff would be arguing what in particular they want.
Factor 4: What is broke for some is fine for others, and also what is fine, may actually be a problem in the future. The old Slashdot in the late 1990's didn't have the DOM comment system. You clicked on Reply it would bring you a reply screen, once you were done it would then reload all the comments back. Taking a lot of bandwidth that isn't needed for a few kilobytes of data saved.
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Why do people tell me I should upgrade to newer stuff like my iPhone 4S, decade old PCs, VGA, PS/2, DVI, CRT TVs, Casio Data Bank calculator watch, etc.? :(
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Yes. It's called Outlook
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Yeah said every 'has been' ever.
There is a reason we no longer run Sybase, DB2, OS/2, SCO Xenix, Solaris, Word Perfect, Nokia, Motorola, Netscape Communicator, Yahoo Mail, Real Audio, IE, and the list goes on and on.
If you don't innovate it is only a matter of time before a competitor does. When that happens you loose the mindshare you once had. You want to save money and expect income to magically keep coming in. Guess what? Someone else will want that money too.
IE is a classic example as it was a superio
Three possible Reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The software is mature, and any "new features" are just Gold Plating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_plating_(software_engineering) (See MS Office suite).
2. The software is NOT mature, but any new features become an arguing match between Developers, Marketing, Upper Management, etc, so thus only minimal changes are ever made. (See Facebook)
3. The software is old, krusty, and incredibly hard to maintain. Adding anything new that would truly be useful is a gargantuan task in painful software archeology. (See Slashdot)
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4) the presmise is false.
Facebook is constantly and slowly changing, I bet you Facebook from a year ago would feel as different as the previous version of most decade old software.
Buying and adding Instagram, adding stories.
That alone is a bigger change than a lot of decade old software over the last two or so years. The interface is constantly being tweaked (for better or for worse), the timeline sorting very obviously just changed dramatically (for the last month or so, it's been a much braoder selection
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"Adding features" is usually associated with "fucking up the UI" - so adding features often leads to massive loss of users. That is why the apps that don't keep adding features also don't keep losing users.
In fact, "fucking up the UI" is probably the biggest reason why Linux has problems defeating Windows. It is not limited to removing useful tools from the menus, and replacing recognisable icons with unrecognisable ones. There are also long ru
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You bastard.
Anyway, yeah I agree completely. A popular site is one that people like to use, if you mess with the UI you are almost by definition annoying the shit out of them. The beginnings of wisdom is to tell your UI designers to prove their ideas are worth something before inflicting them on huge quantities of your users.
And no, "we'll run an A/B test!" is not really a solution... continually inflicting minor random breakage on some percentage of yo
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This sword cuts both ways. e.g. Introducing the Office ribbon drove created a significant market opportunity for OpenOffice.
Apples to Oranges Comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
A major service website (like the ones listed in TFS) is defined by its basic function. Facebook provides communications between users. Google is a search engine, Outlook is a mail program, YouTube shows videos. Once the major function of the website is defined and accepted, adding new features and functionality will be confusing and offputting to the users.
Applications, on the other hand, must support new types of data, new data locations (ie cloud services), different display and printing options and etc. In terms of continually updating applications is for some vendors (*cough* Microsoft *cough*) is a source of revenue.
When you talk about why are there lots of coders for websites versus few for Applications, I would point out that you aren't looking behind the scenes at a website - many coders are required to implement new technology to bring the services faster and more reliably to more users as well as keeping ahead of the bad guys.
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A major service website (like the ones listed in TFS) is defined by its basic function. Facebook provides communications between users. Google is a search engine, Outlook is a mail program, YouTube shows videos. Once the major function of the website is defined and accepted, adding new features and functionality will be confusing and offputting to the users.
I don't believe that. Email was well understood and defined, with well understood conventions like local storage and folders. Google innovated with web based and search driven. Phones were well understood until the iPhone turned everything upside down. Facebook has continually grown, adding news, messenger, games, emergency notifications, etc.
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I disagree.
I do not consider gmail particularly groundbreaking. It is only an evolutionary change in what came before. Outlook and Yahoo mail did cover this space pretty effectively. Google gave us something similar and a little easier to use for free. A lot of people do not use the search function much at all -- we delete old mail.
Phones were only well understood in terms of making phone calls, not anything else. Which is why Palm got caught with its pants down. iPhones were innovative for making you
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GMail was innovative in giving people a gig of space instead of 10 megs. But that's not brilliance, just spending .
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Gmail was a huge change for me because it was then first client with a search function that was good enough that I didn't have to organise mail any more. Lots of time saved.
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Gmail was a massive change because they were first to give massive storage so that you didn't have to delete mail, and also the first to institute genuinely useful spam filtering. Pretending it was not substantially different from every other offering at the time is revisionism.
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Re: Apples to Oranges Comparison (Score:2)
For me the most awesome change Gmail added, other than storage, was organizing messages into single, collapsible conversations. Nowadays everyone does that, but before, as far as I remember at least, all we had were folders, threaded conversations of individual emails, or individual emails organized by date, author, subject etc. That completely changed how I used email, and for the better.
I also remember how many people deeply disliked the Gmail way of organizing emails and complained to no end about it, so
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Effective conversation threading ... major win ... major win (FOLDERS NEED TO DIE)
Tagging system instead of folders
It is called "good engineering" (Score:5, Informative)
Following every hype, adopting features fast and without clear goal, etc. is called "bad engineering", incidentally. The problem is that there are a lot of bad and really bad people at work on the web and on apps that I will refrain from calling "engineers" because they do not deserve that title. Hence doing it right for a change stands out. In other engineering disciplines it would not or at least not nearly as much.
Because there's no need for it? (Score:5, Insightful)
To Wit: /. Beta. Did not want, do not want, what is now is fine... just fix the goddamned unicode problem.
Seriously. The quest for the New Shiny more often than not just ruins things. Like round picture frames in contact lists, etc. Who wants that?! Square was just fine. And flat UI designs.. they universally look like something a preschooler did with safety scissors, brightly-colored construction paper and paste.
Re:Because there's no need for it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Often new features are there to sell the new version. Desktop software has to keep selling new versions, but web apps are typically free.
Having said that I bet there is plenty of work being done on the back end to analyse data and make more money from ads.
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Often new features are there to sell the new version. Desktop software has to keep selling new versions, but web apps are typically free.
Having said that I bet there is plenty of work being done on the back end to analyse data and make more money from ads.
That is changing. Adobe is subscription now. Office it is office 365. Oracle it is on their weird cloud thingie as they still sell RDBMS but their own sales team makes no commissions off the classic on-prem licenses.
Web apps and SAAS is where the money is at now and the new thing which makes sense. MMOs in games still make the most money outside the appstores. Wow and Everquest have been around forever but it is an early SAAS so to speak
Re:Because there's no need for it? (Score:5, Informative)
There is no Unicode problem. /. supports Unicode just fine.
There's a Unicode troll problem though, which is why /. has a rather strict whitelist of allowed characters. The trolls were constantly abusing the Unicode control codepoints and adornment codepoints to screw up the page and turn it all black, reverse text, etc.
The back end supports Unicode completely and has for nearly 2 decades now. Unfortunately, nearly 2 decades ago, the admins were having to delete comments (or mod them down) continuously that abused Unicode and turned the site useless.
You'll find it on any new website with brand new shiny comments section impacted by this and they rapidly either shut down comments or filters as well. Unicode is not easy and there are many issues with it, see all the iPhones and Androids crashing or doing other things when sent some strange Unicode text.
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There's a Unicode troll problem though, which is why /. has a rather strict whitelist of allowed characters.
Hmm. How about they allow ' when posted from an iphone? Or is this some entirely different problem?
Re:Because there's no need for it? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh please... slashdot hasn't made any effort to even try being user friendly. For example in Norwegian we have: æÃÃ¥
Didn't parse correctly? Here it is with HTML entities:
æ = æ
ø = ø
å = å
What about a simple thing as micrometers:
µ = nope
A simple formula with like delta, epsilon or sigma?
δ = nope
ε = nope
σ = nope
Nobody has made the least bit of effort to whitelist basic scientific characters. Or tried to make characters that actually are whitelisted work through normal input. I have worked with Unicode, if you want an "open" interpretation it's pretty hard. If you just want a "closed" interpretation of basic character sets (what 99.99% need) it's pretty damn easy.
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If it was a whitelist, then non-whitelisted characters would be filtered, not mangled. It's a bit inconsistent whether a non-ASCII character is rendered as random characters or hidden from view.
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Slashcode may support Unicode "just fine", but slashdot is shit at it. Not even supporting left and right quotes is sorry AF.
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There's this subset of Unicode called ASCII. They support some of that.
Different Target Market (Score:4, Interesting)
Websites market to basically every human. That means the 95% of humanity that isn't tech nerds. There are a few other software suites like this. Namely Office Suites. MS Office hasn't really had a big change since 2007 -and LOTS of people hated it when they did. Facebook, Google, etc. all have to cater to the bottom 90% of users. That bottom 90% doesn't like change very much, so features are added very slowly.
Most all the rest of the software on the planet is marketed to tech nerds -people that will actually PAY for software. To keep the money coming, the companies have to keep new features coming.
It's simple.... (Score:5, Interesting)
...the desktop software is the product, and thus needs to be upgraded for the revenue stream to keep up.
For all of the web sites cited, YOU'RE the product, and you can't be upgraded.
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But if Amazon offered to upgrade me, I would probably accept.
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If they're willing to let themselves be upgraded with Alexa tech, I hardly see the difference.
Because many User interfaces for websites... (Score:4, Interesting)
... are designed by idiots trying to increase ad space. Let's be honest. The new site redesign at reddit is much worse and less readable then old reddit. The reality is if reddit and other sites want more ad space they'd do well to create a completely seperate site from the main reddit site.
Most enhancements to the user interface are designed by total idiots. It's not that "innovation" is bad, it's that you need to think about the person using the website instead of business focus based bullshit. Many of the reasons people use social media like reddit or slashdot is because they got the user interface design mostly correct even if there is some cheap or bad design.
Instead of saying "how do we expand our audience or our reach to make more $$$" try to understand perhaps you need to find other avenues of making money besides selling ads or transforming a website from why any group of people found it interesting in the first place.
Because they have more sense than Google. (Score:5, Informative)
What the fuck are you smoking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Websites don't push out new features? They do all the time. What they don't do is announce them- they tend to just roll them out. So you get a constant barrage of small updates. Facebook in particular- I worked there. It gets new features daily. To the point where the people working there don't even know what's going out- whenever discussion of making a "what's new" type announcement was brought up, they basically decided it was impossible to keep track. If anything your description is precisely backwards.
You're the reason we have the ribbon and window 10 (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, let's take something that works and mangle it till it is useless!
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Hey, let's take something that works and mangle it till it is useless!
You know I adjusted just fine 10 years ago with Office 2007 after 1 week. I can't live without it now as I am used to hitting the shift key for the keyboard shortcuts and I can now use Word without a mouse on a plan because of this.
No more unproductive nested menus. Sometimes change is hard and you need to use your muscle memory to learn new things.
Business Model (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the business model.
A service website typically gets revenue (directly or typically indirectly) from use. Once it's working, popular, and supporting most potetial customers, the bux roll in. Why change what's working and risk breaking that? Essentially only bug fixing and reach-expanding could pay for itself.
An application typically gets its revenue from sales. Once it's sold, the user has it. No more money from him. Given time you saturate the market and your revenue peters out - while your support load continues.
This can be fixed partly by making the app run on other platforms and expanding the target market. But for ongoing revenue you need previous customers to buy again. They won't do this unless you provide a later-and-greater version with enough extra functionality to be worth it. Then they're in the business of adding bells and whistles until the old customers become repeat customers.
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in your world apparently there are no competitors and thus no need to compete
yes, that really is how you think! we see it, the words are right there, you don't even think about competing
You're confusing my description of what goes on in a C-suite with my own thinking.
In THEIR world, the pointy-haired bosses see no need to compete - at least until some competitor is starting to come up behind them and cut into their market share. THEN they MAY think about adding features (often cloned) to head them off.
Ofte
As things get bigger, they get harder. (Score:2)
Desktop applications only have to worry about one user, Websites have to worry about all of them. As a result, in the early life of a website (with few users), it's relatively easy to have engineering focus on features, as most available web tech these days can handle that. As your user base grows, however, you start running into scale issues where features you've previously built don't hold up so well. Suddenly, you're putting a good chunk of your engineering effort into updating your existing features for
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Family Guy: Giggity!
Archer: Phrasing!
Coming soon - Google Ribbon! (Score:2)
Problem with updates (Score:2)
deployment (Score:2)
a desktop app rolls out on a per-user basis, over time, and the desktop app is behind a users' own firewall (or NAT), which is their responsibility to maintain.
a webapp: you make one deployment error or one security snafu and the entire userbase - your entire business - comes crashing to a halt, effective immediate.
there's really no comparison. running a web service is scarily unforgiving of mistakes. the only real way for this to be fixed is to change the paradigm of what constitutes a web app: distribut
Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
For software, the income comes from the people who pay to get the software. No new features means no sales, since no new features means there's no need to upgrade to a new version.
For Facebook/etc, the income comes from the ads pushed to the users. Too many new features at once and too much difference between versions and your risk loser your precious users.
Next question?
Because Screwing Up Is A PROBLEM (Score:5, Insightful)
The bigger you are, the more it costs. If you're a popular service, you're likely running many, many servers doing many, many things across a broad geographic area. You've carefully implemented your infrastructure to balance cost, stability, reliability, and performance. Adding just one new feature can completely upend this calculus. If you're running multiple server farms in multiple data centers, this gets expensive quickly.
You can't afford "aw shucks oopsie woos". Whoops! Your new feature caused some unexpected behavior for 15% of all users, resulting in 18 hours of downtime! If you're a small web operation, you're sending out a lighthearted email apologizing for the inconvenience and promising to do better. Maybe you're even offering a week's worth of free service. If you're a major player, you're in the world news. Your enterprise customers are screaming at you--or worse, they're not screaming at you and are looking for your replacement. You're working on figuring out just how much this will impact the bottom line, because if you're going to need to cut back somewhere, you want to know that as early as possible. Mess up hard enough, and you're looking at a subpoena from your governmental bodies of choice.
You can't afford to annoy your users. Ooooh, we've all had that time when we rolled out an awesome new feature and the user response ranged from "meh" to "change it back right now you gibbering twits." That's never fun, is it? Gotta roll back to yesterday's configuration, apologize, and try to figure out how to move forward. If you're a major player, "rolling back" may be nigh impossible, and if you've already reconfigured your infrastructure to accommodate your new feature, that's money already spent (and worse, your new configuration may even be sub-optimal in the absence of said new feature.) You're basically looking at the same outcome as the previous point, perhaps minus the subpoenas and plus a bit more global mockery on social media.
Messing up will cost you users, and those users are unlikely to return. If you're small, this can be weathered, and is almost expected. There are way more fish in the sea, and you if can iron things out, you've still got plenty of room to grow. If you're big, everyone already knows about you and what you do. You've got a lot smaller pool of "new" people to bring on compared to the people you've already reached. Big companies that mess up need to work to retain unhappy customers, because there aren't that many fish in the sea who haven't already heard of them.
Reason? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why Do Popular Websites Add New Features So Sparingly?
If it ain't broke, don't break it.
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Why Do Popular Websites Add New Features So Sparingly?
If it ain't broke, don't break it.
Yep just like Yahoo and MySpace.
Money ... (Score:2)
... I don't want a reward or nothing.
It's just Perception (Score:2)
Since a lot of desktop software is sold via a license, they need to make a big deal out of the "shiny new version" in order to get your upgrade business.
For websites, advertising is the model so sites just quietly add features all the time to keep current - and since it is continuous they don't make a big deal of it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
In Defense of Nero (Score:2)
So, full disclosure, Nero gives me free beta/release copies for review and such. Even ignoring that, I feel the need to come to their defense just a bit, because it directly relates to the feature-bloat balance problem.
Yes, Nero's code got big. Far bigger than maybe it needs to be. However, Nero quickly found itself in a no-win situation.
In 1999, everybody with a CD burner had Adaptec CD Creator, with Nero being a purchased alternative or, in some cases, bundled with aftermarket burners. Either way, everybo
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Everyone I know who chooses, chooses k3b, and the rest use Brassero.
I paid once for Nero, and had so many hideous problems I abandoned it even when I got free versions with new CD players - I think the CDS are in a box somewhere.
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And IMGBurn has been caught bundling with malware. If Nero was lean and worked well with modern hardware, I sure wouldn't pay $60, but I would pay $10 each for multiple home computers. I'd pay $40 for a portable edition I can take with me to a job site. An if I lost my license key, I'd just buy it again.
They should have gotten rid of all but one or two developers and accepted a niche market - but never dump the core competencies, as there's not even a viable paid alternative to the freeware.
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Since Imgburn became malware, AnyBurn [anyburn.com] has been a good free replacement for lightweight CD/DVD burning, and even supports ISO editing.
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I wish, sometimes, that Windows apps had the UNIX philosophy of "Do 1 thing and do it well". But, you can't sell the exact same app to a person twice if nothing has changed, so I understand WHY it happens, but it eventually kills most payware..
There is a lot of Windows Free (as in beer) or FOSS software that has no need to push for more sales, and actually do a good job of one thing, and one thing well.
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I still use nerolinux even though it's been discontinued for years now because it does everything I need to do and does it well. Oh noes, it takes a few hundred MB with all the crap it does with DVD, video CD, etc etc. However will I find disk space for that?
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Nero was cool and great ... during the XP era when Windows could not burn ISOs.
One of the reasons I was a proponent agaisn't the whinners on here 5 years ago clinging to XP was using 13 year old technology you need to use third party shitware like RealAudio and Nero and toolbars in your browser to do things due to it's age.
On a modern OS MS, Mac, or Linux with a modern browser there is no need for shitty flash, insecure java, or Adobe printing adons to get your PC to do modern things.
the opposite (Score:2)
Wow, I think the opposite is true. Everyone and their dog seems to be adding endless new JS crap to websites that no one needs.
You're not paying attention. (Score:4, Informative)
Split your examples into major services, and small specific services, then compare them to desktop software. I mean properly!
Facebook? Features get added, removed subtle UI changes etc on a monthly basis. Google does so on an event driven basis (Have you been watching the world cup ticker updating live in your google results?) Did you notice the change to maps voice navigation that rolled out last month in how it announces locations? Did you see the added feature that asks you to confirm traffic accidents?
Of course not. You're not paying attention.
Likewise how many value added features were constantly changing on ICQ? What has changed in Skype other than the number of adverts that are shown? Yeah they move the buttons around but features? At the start of this year they added the ability to on the fly switch between multiple cameras. Back in 2015 they added group chat.
If you have small apps, websites, or special purpose programs you don't need new features regardless of the platform.
If you have large software or web apps you will get new features regardless of the platform.
Pay attention.
They know (Score:2)
They know how many use add ons that will not support other non https networks and block data from another domain.
That needs a https connection to one trusted domain. Bandwidth costs for a huge site load per view becomes a matter of profit.
Keep it simple and fast with less data costs that support all computers OS and browsers expected to view the site.
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it has become a steaming pile of shit!
For fuck's sake make it search for the terms you put in the search box, instead of serving up irrelevant crap - while you still have a job. At the very least Make it possible to set verbatim as a default - non-verbatim searches are complete time wasters.
Having done that, add an "No I am NOT fucking shopping" setting - so when doing academic research we don't get to hear about Amazon, Asos and Ebay.
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For fuck's sake make it search for the terms you put in the search box, instead of serving up irrelevant crap - while you still have a job. At the very least Make it possible to set verbatim as a default - non-verbatim searches are complete time wasters.
I remember back when Google was new, one advantage over Altavista was that it would search a boolean AND as a default, where most search engines only used boolean OR. Then Google moved to boolean OR by default and you had to add a "+" to force an AND.
Now it searches boolean OR of unrelated synonyms of the words you type. And it seems to like showing garbage Quora results up top, instead of the previous garbage Yahoo answers results. Back in the day it used to show useful results.
They also changed ranking to
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See, here's the thing. You don't have to explain adn sell me on your change (unlike an application developer). But if I had the choice of Google's 2005 search algorithm (obviously, with modern webcrawling) or the 2018 search algorithm, I'd be tempted by 2005. At least it feels like the results then were just plain better. Which is to say, I believe you're changing the algorithm, but I don't believe you're improvising i
Because users don't want them (Score:2)
People typically don't like when their environment changes unexpectedly.
So, if you make substantial changes of popular site, you unavoidable get your old users angry.
Even if they need these features (and typically they are not - they use just a small subset of existing features), they may think that need to change their habits is too big cost for new feature.
If you produce desktop programs, your users have an option to continue use old version.
Lot of people still use Windows XP ten years after new and shiny
Because people HATE change! (Score:2)
That's why I still use the page with the link:
"https://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1"
what? (Score:2)
What youtube has very publically fucked with its site repeatedly over the last year or so adding unwanted redesigns and functionality. Their latest idiot functionality is to make the subscription list page less useful by applying some dipshit algorithm to show interesting content. Never mind they have at least two other pages that do that.
Their other recent brainwave is to kill off Vevo and other artist pages by combining several distinct accounts into one "youtube official" feed per artist and removing the
Selection bias and budget (Score:2)
Amazon releases an update, on average, every second [zdnet.com].
Google updates its search algorithm about twice a day [moz.com].
Do you have a Windows computer? Microsoft updates the OS and many of its desktop applications on a weekly schedule through Windows updates.
Release frequency is not related to desktop vs. Web. It's related to the budget a company has for software development.
Because they have usage metrics (Score:2)
Whenever a change is made, the metrics show users have difficulty with the change. Even if it doesn't, you have to suss out the effect, which gets fuzzier with more changes. Over time, marketeers decide the less change the better.
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Plenty of books, especially tech books, add chapters in new editions.
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You add features "to complete sprints".
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The question is kind of like asking why an aircraft carrier costs more than a VW, but can't turn as sharply.
GREAT line!
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Large web apps are often at near saturation. If someone hasn't signed up for facebook or gmail already then it's very unlikely that any kind of redesign or feature addition will change that calculus for them. However it does risk alienating existing users and in turn reducing the revenue stream.
Contrast that with non-subscription desktop software, you make nothing off satisfied users, you instead only make money off people who want the latest version and that forces a certain level of innovation. There's al
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Web developers are constantly working on the most requested feature: speed. That's not a problem for most PC programs, which can access data with a much wider bandwidth, run on powerful CPUs/GPUs (do not have to deal with cell phones), and do not have to work around the bugs of a thousand different browsers.
Then how come websites slow down over time? I can understand limited performance if you're trying to run an interactive application through interpreted web languages, but it seems as time goes on, pages that should be serving basically static content (news articles, blogs), slow down.