A good friend, Francine Hardaway, forwarded some comments and question about Flypaper that were on a social networking site called FriendFeed that I am not a member of. So I sent her the following to answer the questions: “why is Flypaper a Windows application that you have to download?” and “why don't you have a Mac version now?”
It is a Windows app because the app was targeted for business pro’s who either create or buy Flash programs especially for sales and marketing. Windows is by far the platform of choice for these people. We do have demand for a Mac version especially from graphic artists. The breakthrough with the Flash stuff we create is that mere mortals can now create, edit and customize real Flash programs. Flash programmers, graphic artists, web developers, etc. can also deliver really cool Flash stuff but now deliver in a way their customers can edit themselves instead of having to go back to the programmer to maintain it. Both the customer and developer wins because usually the programmer hates maintenance. They love to create.
It is a “download” because it has to process heavy graphics using lots of processing power. The king of web apps, Google, has big downloads for programs like Sketchup, Google Earth, Picassa etc. iTunes is also a big download. Keynote and ppt would be large downloads if they were not already on the machine when you bought it. Imagine millions of users trying to simultaneously create, edit and share large graphical presentations, or what we call “interactive stories”, using cloud computing power.
I have tried all the web based apps doing anything in the Flash arena. While I can get to the app very quickly, if I upload a song from my iTunes it takes several minutes to do. Videos, pictures etc. are even more painful. And all these apps are just now in either private beta, with a few in public beta. All are struggling with performance with only a few hundred users. iTunes, Picassa, Earth, Sketchup, Keynote etc. are all extremely fast and have millions of users. So the bother of an upfront download is made up 100x every time you use it. There are very simple graphics products like Slide where all you’re doing is adding some glitz and glitter to a pix and then posting it somewhere. That works. But anything significant combining text, video, pictures, recorded narration, animations, existing swf’s, Flash components in one story is very painful. Especially as thousands/millions of users are trying to do it at the same time. Every Flypaper story created though runs anywhere on the web requiring nothing but Flash on the computer which everyone has.
Also, it is key to understand Flypaper is best used to create “Interactive Stories that Sell” – on the web. The best use for ANY presentation building app is to create slides that support what I am going to say in a presentation. Flypaper is best to create and share stories that tell themselves 24/7 on the web. You can use it for presentations, but interactive stories are what it is all about. And with the Pro version (coming next week) you can now track everything about what a viewer of your story is doing with it. And the viewer can communicate with you in a variety of ways using our Flash components.
It does take a little bit of work and time to “get” what you can do with Flypaper as it is NOT a simple application. With power, there is always a tradeoff with simplicity. I had to play around a lot with some of the google apps mentioned above to figure those out as well. And iTunes can get really hairy especially when you are trying to get around the DRM elements so I can get stuff off one iPod to another iTunes. (I know you are not supposed to do that but most of the time I am doing it with stuff I own but are on different iPods or computers.) Plus you have to create an account to do anything in their store etc. You have to create an account with almost ANY of the online apps as well.
We are always trying to make Flypaper easier to learn. In the beta we did a really good job of “hiding” the great tutorials we have. Next week's launch of the general release and the pro version you can now readily find those tutorials under Help. So that should help.
So far, though, we have been amazed at the stuff people are already doing with our beta version and are very pleased with number of downloads.
Hope this helps with the questions and comments here. Perhaps this shows there is some method to our madness. Since I have been doing software for a long time I have learned there are always tradeoffs no matter what you do. All you can do is try to do a great job for your ultimate target market.
