The Ecosystem of Easy
I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of “Ease-of-Use” and why some of the biggest and best positioned companies have such a hard time making easy-to-use products. For example, why did Sony who invented the whole category of portable music players go so horribly wrong with their digital version? Why does Microsoft come out with a Zune 5 years after the first iPod and still fail to even copy the industry leader properly?
It looks like the answer lies in the “Ecosystem of Easy”. I remember growing up with my first Walkman (actually my dad’s, but he could never figure out how to get technology to work). It was great - you simply put in the tape, hit play and turned up the volume. ABBA never sounded so good. The Walkman was a perfect tool for the cassette-based music ecosystem. You went to the store and bought your tape OR your friend made a mix tape and gave it to you. All you had to do is insert the tape, plug in the headphones and hit PLAY. Simple cassette-based ecosystem. The rules stayed the same with CDs.
The early-adopter days of Napster (1999) and Diamond Multimedia’s Rio (1998) player proved that digital audio held promise, but it wasn’t until the iPod came around in October 2001 that a real shift occurred. Two years later, the iTunes store launched, making the entire music ecosystem easy to use. Music was purchased when you wanted it (online anytime), organized how you wanted it (searchable and sortable lists), and was much more convenient to carry (1000 songs anyone?). You essentially could find, enjoy, and share the right music at the right time.
So, what did Sony do? They launched their ecosystem, Sony Connect, in 2005 to universal criticism. Sony had years to study Apple’s successful strategy and failed to execute anything properly. The software was Windows-only and particularly buggy, so the purchase process suffered. The audio formats were proprietary, so vast existing libraries would have to be re-encoded before they could be loaded into the players. The audio players just never caught on… this coming from the company that INVENTED portable audio and is one of the best product manufactures and marketing experts on the planet. They simply failed in recreating the necessary components of the new music ecosystem.
Has Microsoft done any better, 5 full years after the iPod launch? Not so much, actually making many of the same mistakes that Sony made. Microsoft abandoned their earlier PlaysForSure audio format, released underperforming software, and offered new and crippled features that no one really asked for. Once again, they failed to build the ecosystem properly.
Why is this important? We are rapidly moving toward a similar shift in video, moving away from a tape or DVD-based ecosystem to an entirely digital world. The complete digital experience - video acquisition, organization, presentation and sharing - needs to be simple and easy to use. Users who embrace this new way of managing rich media libraries will want to find ONE system and do it well - imagine testing a different accounting system every year and you’ll get the idea of how sticky these libraries will become. So - the systems that are the easiest to use will rise to the top for good reason.
Regards,
Bill