So today Fallon launched an app called Skimmer. It seems to be a slimmed down version of FriendFeed. It launched and then it promptly crashed. What's the html tag for schadenfreude?
No, that's a cheap jibe. As you will see from my twitter conversation with a few people I think it's genuinely good that Fallon are doing this. The sooner everyone realises that there is no digital vs traditional the better off we will all be. I know it won't make blogs as interesting but I am sure we can all find something else to argue about.
Hi, sorry your initial experience wasn't good. We're still in beta though! :) Hopefully you'll have better luck soon.
Some good points in the pictured conversation. To the point about area of expertise, I think that what has long been considered "area of expertise" for marketing agencies is changing, or at least needs to. The line between product and marketing will continue to blurand agencies need to be ready for that. Skimmer is an experiment, created with an extremely small budget to see if a creative agency's approach to an app like this would appeal to some people (and to get people like yourself discussing us, of course ;).
There is no doubt you learn digital marketing by doing and working wtih networked computers is complicated so we have to be sympathetic to innovative sites having bugs.
Bigger question is whether traditional agencies should be managing application development. Being really good at telling a story through film is an amazing skill, if they want to do applications they have to invest in QA, process, version control ... it is a whole different world. And that is after understanding the subtleties of what's been built before, why interface choices can make or break it, and why people will substitute this for another application.
This is the other end of the spectrum from advertising. I might just get a good 30 second film from a team at Accenture ... but I wouldn't bet my job on it.
I was under the impression that Skimmer was developed by a Sierra Bravo, a consultancy (a la a very slim Accenture) who should be well versed in the software development lifecycle. I assume they were responsible for QA etc...?
http://bit.ly/sJeKB
It's appropriate that Fallon didn't apportion blame to them for the hiccup.
James Cooper
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Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 17 Nov 2009
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