If you spend any year on the internet, you probably noticed that your user experience continues to get worse.
The websites are waterlogged with automatic contrast ads, pop-ups and tracking scripts. Customer service chatbots are useless, despite promises of genetic AI. Social media algorithms reinforce Rage-Bait to keep you scrolling and dedicated. Dating applications hide all the good behind a paywall. Your printer will not work without a monthly subscription. Oh, and good luck cancels this subscription to three clicks or less.
This is the backwash of internet shift from a first user experience to one designed to maximize commitment, advertising revenue and subscriptions.
Ed zitronIts chief executive Ezpr And the host of the best podcast offline, calls it “”economyThe “result” of a technological industry that has become so obsessed with growth that you, the customer who pays, is an annoying that must be much more mitigated than a participant in an exchange of value. ”
In a recent episode of Podcast Equity, I talked to Zitron – who writes a book called “Why everything stopped working” – why the stagnation of large companies creates the perfect opportunity for the newly established to challenge the establishment of the establishments.
Zitron did not hold back when describing the decline of the Big Tech, criticizing his obsession with the development of the fourth in a quarter that leads to underwater products: “They are ugly, they are expensive, they do not work very well, you do not like to use them.” He claimed that many of these dominant players have grown up “fat and lazy” and “overly belief”, their business models based on the idea that “it is just easier to stay with us”.
“You can beat this,” Zitron said. “Anything you see on the internet that is crap right now is threatened.”
As Zitron sees, there are numerous areas that are mature for disorder. One of the most obvious is the social media, where he notes that “use Instagram right now is to fight the meta to get to the things you want” and to get through what Meta wants to see. “And Facebook is even worse,” he mourns.
This user experience, coupled with political maneuvering for Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, is why we see people’s defect from X and Meta and registration for decentralized tissue platforms, which is a system of independent, private servers who work together to provide private and access to information.
Bluesky and Mastodon have emerged as popular alternatives on X and many newly established businesses are throwing their hats on the ring to challenge Instagram and Tiktok. In the decentralized space, Bluesky begins a photo sharing application called Flashhes and Pixelfed is already attracting users. Many Tiktok users have downloaded Rednote as the BYTEDANCE application remains in a vacuum.
Business and Productivity Software
Zitron also sees the huge opportunities when it comes to businesses and productivity, such as the Microsoft 365 that is not “big”.
Zitron said of Microsoft widely, “they don’t make excellent products. They don’t have any time.” Here, he added that he would “may he put the game [division] Except for this complaint. “I really like the Xbox section,” he said. Then he added: “But they love to eliminate people and I am sure that this place is going to fly soon.”
But it’s not just Microsoft. Zitron claimed that many once beloved Easter Silicon Valley-such as Microsoft, Salesforce, Dropbox and Zoom-missed their way after the audience. The pressure to provide a quarter -time increase for shareholders is forcing companies to prioritize short -term profits over the long -term quality of products.
It highlights Google’s documents as an example of increasing corporate transcendence designed to benefit a company at the expense of its users.
“Google Docs was favorite for the fact that it was really clean, easy to use,” Zitron said. “The problem is now that it tells me that I need AI. I need to use Gemini on it now.”
Zitron is called Adobe “the weakest company in technology” right now, calling them “desperately” and seeking replacement. Some potential challengers we have seen include Figma, affinity and blender.
In general, Zitron believes that consumers will play a role in this shift as cotton on the self -serving “laziness” of established actors.
“I believe that next year, we will see a real shift of consumers, both businesses and others away from these Shitty companies. And when I say Shitty companies, I mean most of the great technology.”
Research
In particular, Google is already facing an attack by numerous newly established businesses and is worth it in Zitron’s mind. Google search is used for the surface of the best links for your query. Now a page is attacked by sponsor links that do not answer your question.
“Google’s search is bad now,” he said, noting that DuckDuckGo “obviously earns money” and can be able to increase if the judge in search of Google Antitrust Trial forces the company to share their data sets with its competitors.
Zitron does not list all other competitors of the search, but it is worth mentioning. For example, embarrassment, for example, competes with the Chatbot type search that answers questions directly with a interlocutor, while referring to resources. Diem is a female social search engine with an AI Chatbot fighting against data bias in a world designed for men. In the decentralized space, Marginalia Search enhances the vague, non-commercial locations and not with the SEO-Optimized Junk, while Openearch is an independent Crawler-based engine.
For users who prioritize not only a better search experience, but also a more focused on private research protection, there is a Kagi, a paid, private search engine with a high quality and without advertising results.
There is also a brave search, a fully independent search index not based on Google or Bing. Brave also has a browser that focuses on privacy, which prevents ads and trackers by default.
Zitron believes that e -mail is another area that could “take on a start”. While e -mail is one of the dominant communication tools, most of our inbox is full of unwanted messages and disorganized due to clunky UX from giants such as Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo. The same is true for email, such as Microsoft Exchange and Google Workspace.
There are many opportunities to stop here, Zitron notes. He says an offer from the Proton encrypted email service “is not as usable as needed” but is not the only game in the city (the rival services include tutanota and skiff). At the same time, the increasingly popular alternatives of Superhuman, Hey and Shortwave are trying to review users’ experience in e -mail.
Create products that do not suck
Zitron sees opportunities for disorder everywhere, and not just in a purely digital sense. It also sees an opportunity for the newly established businesses to undertake Amazon’s shipping and logistics operation, creating a coalition of other companies with smaller businesses – a store for the delivery side. “
Whether it is a new real estate technology to replace the world’s “Fat and Happy”, or a better version of Canva not inflated with AI offers, Zitron has requested a new assumption of the business capital model. Says VC has been very focused on growth at all costs, which has created a labor of the newly established businesses that made too much money – and have nowhere to go as a result.
Zitron’s PR business is to draw attention to newly established businesses, so it is in its interest to emphasize Big Tech’s many weaknesses in comparison. Still, it was an inspirational conversation.
If you are cute for a better user experience, or work on something to download the big ones, you will surely enjoy it. See our conversation here.
