New productivity software startups
I worry this is going to end up with a Cambrian explosion of tools that don’t interoperate with each other. This is the main side effect - anything that can be made into a business productivity app will be made into a business productivity app whether it makes sense or not.<p>For example - Facebook made itself into a productivity app, called Facebook at Work. It’s not great, but they use it. Notepad, Excel, literally anything that is a good ‘single-player’ experience will eventually end up one, either built by a third party, or if they’re smart and act fast, their own. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just probably better to let things shake down on their own for a while. We’re just now getting the social aspect of work right, after a decade of Google Plus grade attempts.<p>(Disclosure being, with some irony, is that I make a Reddit as an engineer productivity app at <a href="https://aether.app" rel="nofollow">https://aether.app</a>, so I have some personal experience with this proliferation.)