I had often lumped SmugMug and 37Signals into the same category, but I have to say that after the past few months I've come to see them in a different light.
37Signals while brilliant in much of what they do, has seemed to acquire the curse of hubris and it's embarrassing to see. Some of their recent responses to criticism in particular seem quite petty, abrasive, and defensive.
SmugMug on the other hand seems much more mature and even self-deprecating in their approach. After meeting Don McAskill it's easy to see why - he is one of the smartest and nicest guys I've ever met. He hosted a geek lunch recently and I was really impressed with him and how genuine he is.
Anyway, it's really great that there are some good examples to follow in our little startup world.
That's a damn good response to a critical writeup. My favorite part of the "we're not targeting the same audience" defense is that no matter what the company says the subtext is always "until we are and we take all their users away".
Smugmug had 200,000 paying users last I heard. It's not a public company, so not obligated to unlimited growth. If they're making money and having fun with their current customer base, there's no need to target everybody else.
They can simply add features either as they become important to their current customers, or as they feel like it would be fun to do (e.g. OpenID). They'll grow organically just fine and still leave plenty of room for everybody else. There are millions of people out there who should share photos online but don't.
'... We don`t make it as easy to get your photos AND metadata back out of SmugMug ...'
This one sucks in my view. But I dont think it matters as much as it does with flickr which seems to attract a geekier crowd. Instead of beating themselves up over something that doesn't matter to users they concentrate on more useful things like openid ~ http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/2007/02/23/new-features-february-23rd-2007/
Instead of spending 10 pages describing why it's actually OUR fault that metadata isn't well supported (we have an open API you could write it yourself) a la 37 signals, he admits the problem and says they will address it. Class act.
agreed. I wasn't aware that 37 is really more than just a software company until I listened to some podcast on the layout of the company. It's really a product company that conceives, designs, market & ships bits as well as atoms. Are they stretched too thin?
What I really liked with SM was the way this lack of an API didn't become an issue that clouds over more important things. SM I think really get the development process - things are going to fail all the time - make small incremental improvements and then make major releases to make major adjustments.
I had often lumped SmugMug and 37Signals into the same category, but I have to say that after the past few months I've come to see them in a different light.
37Signals while brilliant in much of what they do, has seemed to acquire the curse of hubris and it's embarrassing to see. Some of their recent responses to criticism in particular seem quite petty, abrasive, and defensive.
SmugMug on the other hand seems much more mature and even self-deprecating in their approach. After meeting Don McAskill it's easy to see why - he is one of the smartest and nicest guys I've ever met. He hosted a geek lunch recently and I was really impressed with him and how genuine he is.
Anyway, it's really great that there are some good examples to follow in our little startup world.