I have no idea if the rank and file in other companies—say, Yahoo and Microsoft—start their day by scheming how to beat, conquer, overtake, pummel, or even “kill” other companies.  At least at the engineering and product management levels, I both hope and expect not.  I prefer to think that—like the folks I work with at Google—most individuals at other companies are dedicated to just making damn good stuff, and not particularly caring how this affects the competition.

But appallingly often it seems that what happens after stuff gets filtered through marketing, execs, journalists… well, it ain’t pretty.

Apparently, engineers and product managers don’t give a whit about users.  They care about beating the other guy.  Stealing their market share.  Even putting them out of business.  And, though as I’ve noted I’m confident that’s not an accurate depiction of what’s going on in the frontlines, I still need to emphatically call it like I see it: That attitude is wrong, it’s shortsighted, it’s counterproductive, and—more concisely—it’s absolute bullshit.

Let me give a clue to these folks who continue to moronically view—or at least portray—the exciting and complex world of technology as cross between WWF and rollerball:  At the end of the day, only the users matter.

No, I really mean it.  Stockholders are fickle, particularly American stockholders.  Competitors sometimes come and go, sometimes lose focus, sometimes totally drop the ball.  Forming business plans around their actions—whether from opportunity or fear—is just plain stupid.

But users?  They are the ones that actually, well, use your products.  Pay you money.  Tell their friends.  Convince their Fortune 500 IT manager.  They have a *need* to be productive, to learn, to feel secure, to have fun.  And there are a LOT of users… not just in America, but all over the world.  If you have 50% market share for a product, you’re probably going to make a lot of money.  If you have 3% of an sufficiently large market, you’re probably still going to make a lot of money.

There is no need to kill anything or anyone, dammit!!! The pie is so large that a significant number of companies can have a slice (or a niche or whatever) and be perfectly happy, successful, and well-respected. 

Hear ye, hear ye!  From now on, the use of the following phrases is to be discouraged, if not downright forbidden:

• Attention metadata.  Attention anything for that matter, unless it’s used in a non-technical phrase such as “Put down the crackberry and pay attention to the real world for a sec, dammit!”
• Web 3.0.  Web 4.0.  Web anything.0, for crying out loud.  See my comments on Web 2.0 and Web 4.0 for more information on this ridiculous fad.  Note:  Web 2.d’oh! is okay.  For now.
• Relationship economy.  I just saw this one today.  Grrr!  Note:  Okay if used to refer jokingly to prostitution.  For now.

I’m sure there are others, but I’m getting nauseous just mulling over the above trite phrases.  And yes, I realize that it’s a sadly losing battle to do away with Web 2.0.

So… what empty, cliched, uber-annoying geek-phrases drive you nuts?

I’ve been duly inspired by my friend Graham.  And given that I’m too lazy / cautious / tired to do a deep and meaningful and original blog entry this evening, I’ve decided to instead just share a few thoughts about the search phrases people have used to get to my humble BLADAM 2.0 site over the last 3 days.  Each phrase is linked to the entry on my blog that the searcher clicked through to (providing a fulfilling-but-sometimes-scary-bladam-blast-from-the-past!)

First, the odd but undoubtedly heartfelt declaration:
i have bad luck
I’m sorry, fella.  I’m not quite sure what sort of solace or answers you were seeking in this grand set of clogged tubes, but luckily another BLADAM visitor feels your pain and offers this advice:
dont feel sad about bad luck
Well, there you have it!  Now we just need Bobby McFerrin to pop by and it’ll all be hunky dory.

Oh, and speaking of heartfelt, I had a few zillion folks visiting here searching for advice about girls (specifically, how to win them over and settle down happy ever after, or at least see them naked).  Faithful readers… let me just be straight with you up front here:  you’re asking the wrong guy, and you’re definitely browsing the wrong blog.  Do I look like Oprah to you?  [hint: the answer to that should be NO.]

So, without further ado, here are the lovestruck searchers: