SpectatorBytes

For many years now, I have written off “software clients” or “desktop applications” as viable consumer experiences. To me, the web browser paradigm is much more user-friendly and convenient. However, there are signs that suggest that “clients”/ “applications” are poised to make a comeback with users.

As a consumer, I have never been a big fan of software “clients” or desktop applications, primarily thanks to the continuous frozen screens that have punctuated my experiences with “clients” throughout the years.  To cause further annoyance, many of these clients are difficult to uninstall. Although these downloadable applications were designed to provide a better experience, like many users, I grew to distrust them. The Web browser-driven experiences proved to be much more convenient, frictionless and more importantly, a less risky alternative.

This dislike for “clients” intensified during my years at AOL, where issues with the AOL application drove user dissatisfaction with the service as a whole. However, during this time, I also noticed an interesting usage phenomenon. Core AOL users appear to prefer the desktop application to the Web browser experience. Those users who were satisfied with the “client” found the experience much more tailored to their needs and overall much more efficient. The mail experience was speedier, IM integration was more intuitive, and content sharing felt more natural.

Many developers and entrepreneurs worked over the years to convince me about the advantages of desktop software over browser-driven services. Yet, despite any of the advantages that clients offer, most consumers were reluctant to download applications and seemed to prefer browser-based alternatives.  Client-based products/services would be challenged to meaningfully scale. During this period of time, we only saw a couple of applications that bucked the trend: Skype and iTunes.

However, consumer attitudes towards downloadable applications may be poised for change over the next couple of years. The following are some of the signs and drivers:

- Clients are becoming lighter (i.e., requiring less time to download) and richer thanks to Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight. These lighter applications tend to create fewer issues than their heavy versions from years ago. On this, my evidence is only anecdotal.
- The success of Apple’s app store for their portable devices appears to be making users comfortable once again with downloading applications. Firefox “plugin” framework may have also contributed to this change in attitude among users.
- The popularity of Twitter “clients” such as TweedDeck, Twhirl, and Twitterrific provide a strong signal of this trend. These clients account for a significant portion (20%+) of the overall usage in Twitter by some estimates.
- Popular web services such as Hulu are experimenting with downloadable applications to enable a better user experience.
- New businesses are being launched once again around client experiences:  Boxee (video) and Spotify (music). Both of these services are enjoying significant buzz among early adopters.

Based on these signs, I expect client applications to become more popular over the next few years.  The Web browser paradigm is somewhat limiting relative to client applications. If users begin to change their attitudes towards downloads, I would expect developers to grow increasingly comfortable focusing on  developing clients rather than browser-based experiences.  Clients can enable the creation of highly tailored experiences, faster services, and more robust/richer experiences overall. The growing proliferation of computing devices beyond the PC will probably stimulate further the popularity and adoption of clients/applications.

The next-generation Web will evolve around much more sophisticated services than the ones we have seen thus far. I am starting to believe that “clients” will play a big part on the new Web.