One smart company: Pandora plays to its strength by keeping it simple.

Hugh Macken • Jan 27, 2010

In evaluating technology and IT services (whether it's Radian6 vs. Sysomos or Salesforce.com vs. 37Signals Highrise CRM): Simpler is often better. Bells and whistles oftentimes are good for making noise and confusing what really matters and not much else. The post One smart company: Pandora plays to its strength by keeping it simple. appeared first on VMR. One smart company: Pandora plays to its strength by keeping it simple. was first posted on January 27, 2010 at 10:30 pm.©2015 "VMR". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

Last is amazing. Last.fm I mean. For those not familiar, Last is a service that recommends and plays music, videos and concerts based on what you listen to.  So you type in “ Huey Lewis and the News ” and it plays 80s music similar to Huey Lewis songs. In theory anyway.  You can also scrobble (whatever that means :), add private tags, add public tags, add and remove friends, create a public profile, message other users publicly, send shout-outs, view user-uploaded videos related to the songs your listening to,  etc. etc…

Pandora.com offers that same service minus all the bells and whistles. In fact the core service, playing songs related to the song or artist you’ve entered, is far more reliable than Last’s.  There have been many times when listening to last.fm that I wanted to listen to a specific song genre (80s pop , for instance) and the Last recommendations that played were not nearly as consistent as the recommendations that pandora played.

My point? In evaluating technology and IT services (whether it’s Radian6 vs. Sysomos or Salesforce.com vs. 37Signals Highrise CRM ): Simpler is better. Bells and whistles oftentimes are good for making noise and not much else.

What’s your take? Do you find yourself keeping it simple when it comes to IT or do you prefer the most sophisticated option out there?  Do you struggle with having to forgo the capabilities that go along with more sophisticated technology?

Oh by the way, while pondering this, I highly recommend that you check out 37Signals’ book, Getting Real .

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