I just saw one of Guy Kawasaki’s earlier presentations (mid 90′s, great speaker) where he goes over 10 tips for entrepreneurs. One of these tips is to “Eat your own dogfood.” The thought behind it is quite simple:
Know what it is your users (or consumers) go through by doing it yourself.
The example he used was when companies would develop graphically intensive websites that required a lot of bandwidth. This was a big mistake companies were making during a time when broadband (fast) internet connections in households were not what they are today.
While his example isn’t so much a concern anymore, it is still accurate, and it still tells the truth of the tale of eating dogfood. Case in point, the social bookmarking site Del.icio.us has made the same error Guy was speaking of, but in a different way.
Del.icio.us put up a blog post that guided iPhone users through how to use Del.icio.us on their phone. The problem, however, is that the guide is done entirely in video- no text, no bullet points, nothing. This is a problem because, on top of all that, the video that was used in their blog post is not supported by the iPhone yet. This means that iphone users cannot figure out how to use delicious on their iphone from their iphone. Can someone say, “Oops!”?
On top of all that, the message this sends to me as an iPhone user is that Del.icio.us doesn’t really care.
Have any of you had an experience where a company you purchased from or interacted with obviously didn’t eat their own dogfood?