Evan Bartlett ‘s blog

I just read “The Brash Boys at 37 Signals Will Tell Yo: Keep it Simple Stupid” in Wired Magazine, and it got me all fired up to write a response, because I thought it developed an incomplete picture.

37 signals leads the charge for one of Web 2.0′s core tenants, simplicity. Their rapid/rabid pursuit of a minimalist products has found a niche in the market, and I respect them for being uncompromising in their approach.

If a user decides that a simple robust feature set is not what they want, then they can go use something else. You cannot build everything for everyone, and sometimes this results in you losing users. You have to do this to protect your core user base, the people that are there for the simplicity, the ones that might not be using this type of software at all if it wasn’t for the simple approach. Obviously, if you start to lose a much more significant number of users, then you have to think about growing with your user base. Continue Reading →