A modern way to extend the web

The web is evolving. Again.

Since the 90′s we’ve gone from simple websites to Java Applets, to Flash websites, to dynamically updating sites with Ajax and finally to full blown applications running in browsers where a server is but a glorified database.

Now, we are at a brink of another revolution.

Websites are becoming extendable ecosystems with the most popular sites garnering tens of different plugins ranging from simple tweaks to full blown features living solely inside browsers, completely independent of the original authors’ intent.

A minimaler Minimum Viable Product

“But I thought user scripting was just for tweaks!?”

The idea of adding things to a website was born with Greasemonkey in 2004, but despite a massive following it never quite gained mainstream support or understanding. Users just weren’t ready.

All of this changed when Chrome really started gaining ground, even surpassing Internet Explorer as the world’s most used browser. Chrome extensions are as simple to create as Greasemonkey scripts, but much easier for the end user – there’s even an “app store” and everything!

And what better way to gaining a massive user base than extending a website that’s already got millions of users? Just look at Rapportive – accidentally launching to 10,000+ users in 24 hours and being acquired by LinkedIn just two years later.

More importantly, your minimum viable product can actually be minimal. You should focus on that one key feature users want, right? So why are you spending all that time creating the ecosystem to put the feature in?

Find a popular app with a problem
Fix it
Prove hypothesis
Profit

You can worry about everything else once your main hypothesis is proven.

Taglr

With that in mind … tagging is kind of broken on Tumblr.

Even though tags are the only thing on Tumblr that makes anything findable, the interface is somewhat lacking. Sure, you can add tags, but who’s got time to think of tags? There are cat pictures to be seen!

Enter Taglr ->