[Adium-devl] Focus/What are we doing?

[Igor Foox]

I am not an Adium developer, just a developer who happens to use Adium
and lurk on this list. But I'd like to give you guys my outsider
opinion.

I think "the best OS X IM experience possible, period" is a great goal
for Adium from the user point of view. I put OS X in there so you guys
don't get it into your head to expand to those other platforms and
de-emphasize OS X. :-) I don't believe that adding V/V  or A/V to the
name will _actually_ have any effect on the market share, user base,
or other metrics of Adium's success. I believe that with a project
like this, which is fairly high-profile in the Mac world, news will
spread. And it will spread quickly.

If you announce that today Adium (X) 2.0 is available and it now
supports audio and video chat and interoperates with X,Y,Z networks,
I'm pretty sure all of your users will hear about it very quickly.
Those who are potential users but don't use it currently will also
hear about it very quickly because the first group will rave about it.
There will be *a lot* of talk if Adium manages to have these features
working well enough to meet the high standard of quality that you guys
have set for yourself so far.

I don't really think focusing more on the A/V part will lead to a lack
of focus on other important parts like the great UI, the
customizability using Xtras, the interoperability with many  networks,
etc. But I _do_ think that calling it Adium AV or Adium VV will
somehow detract from the brand because in all honesty it just doesn't
sound as good. :-)


Just my 2 cents.
Igor

On 10/18/07, Chris Forsythe <chris at growl.info> wrote:
> Folks,
>
>     So for the first couple of years of what ended up being Adium X, we
> were going for "so many features you'll crap your pants". For those who
> are newer, yes, that was the motto.
>
>     We stopped that a while ago, but we never really came back with what
> it is we're doing. I've been running under the belief that we're going
> for "the best IM experience, period", but I'm sure others feel other
> ways. This has come to light recently, however indirectly, with the
> naming convention discussion we had recently. Some folks wanted Adium
> VV/Adium AV or something similar, which would indicate some kind of
> emphasis on Voice/Video. Others have expressed interest in having
> voice/video, but not really focusing on it. My opinion of this is that
> what we're seeing is a different set of goals from each person, and
> without a clearly laid out plan/structure for what we are achieving,
> we're going to continue to have these types of discussions, which could
> degrade into any number of weird/odd or even bad situations.
>
>     I've also been reading a lot of self help/marketting type books,
> some of you know why, but I can't go into it right now. These books
> however have drilled the point into my skull that this is something that
> we need to do, that we need to define what we're doing and where we are
> going with this. What makes us unique (our purple cow ( Seth Godin
> reference, better explanation:
> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/28 and
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294 and his
> Purple Cow book are all excellent)) with Adium, what our goals are, and
> where we are going.
>
>     I've been meaning to send this email for a while, I really think
> that once we define what we're doing and where we want to go, the random
> ambling we have will start to have a sharper focus and we'll get there
> faster. I also thinks that you're going to have to think about why you
> work on Adium in the first place, and why the others work on Adium.
>
>
> Chris
>
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