Every time I stumble on articles or posts discussing tech products, I’m perplexed when someone uses the word “successful” to describe a product with a lot of users. There’s a better word for products like that, and that’s “popular”. Maybe I’m the odd one here, but I don’t think the popularity of a product is what we should use to evaluate if it’s also a successful one.

If I were given 50 billion to spend, and I used it to open a restaurant where everyone could come and eat for free, every day, no strings attached, I am confident my restaurant would become instantly very popular, and it would be fully booked, all the time. Would you consider that a successful restaurant? I’d say no because, unless someone keeps giving me money to burn, at some point, I’d have to shut everything down or I’d have to completely change my business model and stop giving away meals for free, which is what made my restaurant popular in the first place.

Now, if I were to run a tech strategy on my restaurant, I’d keep burning enough money until all the other restaurants in my area are out of business because the obviously can’t compete against free, and once that happens I’d start charging people money since now they have no choice but to come to my restaurant if they want to eat out.

Or, option B, I’d start doing something insanely shady, like sprinkling crack cocaine on my dishes to make people addicted to my restaurant. Both options are atrocious, and if you disagree, well, fuck you.

A product being popular is an indication of a lot of people using it. Doesn’t necessarily mean that the product is good. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s successful. And if you want proof of that, just browse the Google graveyard. Or pay attention to whatever the fuck Open AI is doing or not doing these days, since it seems to me that they’re killing products left and right.

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