Being First Vs. Being Best

North Dot Com iPad photo enhanced copy

Dave Allen from North recently posted a fair bit of dissatisfaction with news media publishers who haven’t quite gone the extra mile with their mobile apps.

At FZ, we often debate whether we should purchase iPads and other gadgets to keep up with the flurry of mobile development. It’s the consensus here that it’s a bad idea to be an early adopter with the iPad, and that next-gen versions will probably leave bandwagoneers feeling more than a little annoyed. Apparently that goes for some mobile apps, as well. Read Dave Allen’s post to see what we mean.

That concept is a little more vindicated every time we read things like Allen’s post. It’s also a great lesson for freelancers; it doesn’t pay to get there first with a new product, gizmo, news story or, well, anything at all if all you’re going to wind up doing is limping back to the drawing board to fix the woefully inadequate whatsit you’ve foisted on the world.

Slow and steady wins the race more often than not.


2 thoughts on “Being First Vs. Being Best”

  1. That’s actually an interesting conundrum. News writers have always fought to be first throughout history. Those newspapers and TV news stations that sold the best in the past were those that could get the scoops on a story. I’m not so sure that’s actually changed. What’s changed is that news gatherers don’t seem to ask enough of the proper questions at the time to at least be more correct before they release something, and I’d say that’s problematic. But in the news industry, slow and steady really doesn’t win more often than not; getting it right does.

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