From Forbes:
Minimalist design has been in vogue for decades. But when did we become enamored of the stripped-down business practice? When did business really start to leverage the power of less?
Google ( GOOG - news - people ) has led the way here. Remember the first time you landed on that spare, slightly dorky page, with just a multicolor logo and an empty box? We take it for granted now, but at the time it was revolutionary; every other search portal was competing to cram as many links, categories, ads and blinking gifs into 800×1200 pixels as it could. How, we asked, could a site with nothing on it make any money? How long will it be around?
Long enough to see the rise of Twitter, which took the art of less to the next level. What does the service do? It allows people to publish their thoughts in 140 characters or less. That’s it? What can you really say in 140 characters? Who could possibly care? How can Twitter possibly grow?
Surprisingly, Twitter has seen astronomical user growth the past year due to people’s insatiable need to communicate. And unlike Google, which is now “boiling a dozen oceans” (to paraphrase tech pundit John Battelle), Twitter has pretty much stuck to its knitting and let thousands of third parties build out applications, services and even advertising. Indeed, celebrities use Twitter as a publicity tool. How much could each of those celebrity tweets be worth in traditional advertising?
So, Twitter doesn’t need to advertise. The company doesn’t even have a marketing department. Nor does it have a PR dept. It’s mostly a bunch of engineers.
And by the way, what makes the engineers at most Web 2.0 start-ups successful is that they do less than traditional software engineers. Instead of building detailed specifications, the new generation of coders practices agile development, which stresses quick iteration and flexibility over detailed planning and documentation.
They release their products early and often, and they pay as much attention to their customers’ input as they do to any static blueprint.
The reasons for less being more has to do with being able to do less much better than anyone else and peole understanding your value proposition much more clearly and with minimal effort and in short time. That is the key to simple.
Less also helps the entrepreneurs understand their value proposition better.
If you can’t explain your mission in the form, “We help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING,” you are not going to have passionate users.
Amen.