The world moves fast. Your competitors move fast with it.

Users move fast, too. Users are more fickle than ever before. This month’s UK WIRED magazine rated Twitter as “tired”. This for a service that’s only five years old with a still-growing userbase. Ouch!

In the world of web products, building and releasing beautiful and delightful products and user experiences is only half of the battle. The other half is winning (and keeping) your userbase. Your product could have a net promoter score of +80, but if it still only has 10 users, is it really successful? If you build it, they won’t necessarily come.

Users want stability and reliability. Once they have settled in to a product that solves a particular need, it’s that much harder to get their attention to yours. At the same time, and perhaps contradictorily (who said human beings were simple?), users also crave the new. New updates, new versions, new features. News, blogs and social channels thrive on the new.

The web has sped up business dramatically and continues to speed up software product innovation. It’s a race to the bottom – at some point we won’t be able to go much quicker – but we’re not at the end of that race just yet. The strategy to compete in this space, I think, has two major components:

1. Work fast. Build fast, iterate fast: improve fast.
2. Be ready for when we hit the bottom. When we can’t go faster, on what track will the next race be run? Which race can you win?

Important note: fast doesn’t mean chaotic and unplanned.