drew olanoff dot com.

Give me Quality or Give me Death

The web is a funny thing. Stay stagnant too long, and you’re over. Innovate too fast, and lose focus. So what are we to do?

I guess it’s different for everyone, but I’ve learned to go by the mantra “Quality over Quantity.” Cliche, isn’t it? Not cliche enough, since it’s a small minority who actually practices that.

Let me explain.

You’re a blogger, you want page views, you want traffic. So you post 12-15 times a day, but your work sucks. It’s really not that good. Think readers will stay? Nope, they won’t. They’ll say “Wow, this is a whole bunch of crap, I’m outta here.” What a waste of your efforts!

That’s not to say that Quantity won’t come AFTER Quality over time. Perfect case of that is one Chris Pirillo. That man makes content in his sleep, my sleep, your sleep, and everyones sleep. But it’s high quality. Why? Because Chris knows what quality is, focused on that, honed that, and got into a groove. Now he can produce quantities of qualities. That’s a winner. Chris, I’d love to hear your thoughts on my assesment of you if you have some time to comment.

The same goes for web development, software development, etc. Lets look at Vista. Jam packed with all kinds of sexy goodness, right? Yup, but it runs like ass. Really horrifically. So much so that Microsoft is now again selling Windows XP. XP has quality and quantity, because it took time to gain both. Will Vista ever be quality? Time will tell, but they shot themselves in the foot by rushing it out without the quality.

Apple’s OS X. Simple, elegant, methodical. Brilliance. Quality AND some Quantity there, but obvious focus on the Quality. Need I say more?

Web development. Twitter. Goes down a lot right? So what, people keep coming back. They have Quality. A Quality concept, design, team, guestbase, the whole 9. People would kill for what they have in the Quality department. The Quantity part (ie: scaling) will come in time. They have done it the right way.

That’s what I practice these days. I used to be a Quantity first guy. Throw enough crap against the wall and something will stick!!! Yeah that’s the ticket.

No. It fails. A lot.

Quality is your savior, quality should be your battle cry. Listen to your guests, listen to your friends, take your time. Before implementing a new idea, concept, feature, web app, software, or hey before you buy that engagement ring or that big house you always wanted…think. Think to yourself “Do I have true QUALITY here? Will QUANTITY come if I take my time and focus?” If you can honestly answer Yes, and others around you concur, you my friend have a winner of an idea and a nice route to success.

So remember, take your time. The web moves at lightspeed, so does life, but like Ferris Bueller said: “Life goes by pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Are you missing “IT”?