The ‘Death Test’ for products
Last week, 2 products were sentenced to death.
- Microsoft Paint. Age: 32 years.
- Adobe Flash. Age: 21 years.
The reaction to MS Paint ranged from Oh no! to 'Please don't !'
Reaction to Adobe Flash death news?
A sigh of relief !
And flash is one product that not only played a huge role in creating the animation / gaming industry but was widely used by startups like YouTube / Slideshare and many more.
But even the developer community has given up on Flash and switched to HTML 5 / other alternatives.
Adobe Flash didn't die today or yesterday. Flash died the day when its core customers (i.e. developers) 'gave up' and stopped caring about the product.
The Death Test for Products
For many / most companies, a way to really check whether their product/service is sticky / is of value to customers is by running what I call a 'Maggi Test'.
Maggi was banned in India for almost 6 months.
6 months in a consumer life is a pretty long time! People often tend to move on to other competitive products and least of all, forget about the ones they weren’t even using. But then, Maggi has made a strong comeback and is still selling like..hot cake err..Maggi.
That is,
What if you aren’t around? Who is going to miss you? Who is going to miss your product/service?
For MS Paint, there was never a 'I love you/you are so sweet' moment (there was no FB page for the product) - the product was just there. It was and is still a part of people's lives and the sudden news of death just hurt everyone who loved the product.
Like MS Paint, how many products do you think can stand a 'death test' like this?