Web 2.0 Killer Apps: The Secret

As Twitter becomes a phenomenon, and catches on big time, I've been thinking about other Web 2.0 killer apps and why they fly.

There's a secret. Some of the earliest killer apps seemed to be all about SAVING TIME. Take search for instance. All the search engines wowed us with how quickly we could find things, saving us loads of time.

Google did even better, lightning fast, but were we only saving time? Or were we also wasting time, as we read through all the unusual results and ran down paths we would never have considered, sometimes just for the fun of it.

And take Blogs, Vlogs, Podcasts, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube -- all the big killer apps of the Social Networking Web 2.0 craze -- yes, they let us connect with people in fast and furious ways, but they also let us hang out, shoot the shit and blah blah blah online. They helped us save time AND waste time.

And as I look at Twitter, and think about text messaging ... again, text saves time but it helps us "waste time" too. But let me redefine "waste time." All of us are working too hard, traveling too much, doing too much and the secret of some of the most successful new killer apps is that they let us REST. They let us RELAX. They let us waste time in a positive sense: letting us regroup, reconnect, regenerate, renew, rethink, relax.

So if you're building the next big thing, make sure you install a park bench or two for wasting the day away. We need it.