oh hey good timing you're just in time
for coffee time with your host ex-google
X Facebook tech lead today I wanted to
talk about the truth about programming
and this is something that's been
bothering me a lot about programming
lately I see a lot of young people going
in the wrong direction and I wanted to
give you a warning about this I believe
that the landscape of coding is changing
so what do I mean about that well I
think that building your own apps and
websites it just doesn't quite work that
well anymore it used to work well but if
you take a look at the landscape of
internet usage a lot of people just
aren't willing to install apps anymore
and as for web usage more and more of it
is consolidating towards these larger
social networks like YouTube Twitter
Instagram and even Facebook most of the
younger generation aren't on that
anymore
don't use that garbage but you may see
people using tik-tok or snapchat quick
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you take a look at how people are using
the internet desktop website usage has
dropped a lot and then people are really
just surfing the net on their phones on
the phones people are really just using
a few apps like 99% of mobile usage is
only for these top 10 apps and then half
of Americans download 0 apps per month
what are these top 10 apps people are
using well YouTube is like 35 to 40
percent of mobile app traffic then you
have like Instagram Twitter LinkedIn
Facebook and a bunch of other stuff but
these are essentially these large social
network platforms so in my mind you can
really imagine the bulk of Internet
traffic as just people on their phones
watching YouTube videos or checking
their Instagram or Twitter or Facebook
social media networks which sort of all
leads me to this conclusion that if you
were to go out there and you build the
small little app or website very few
people are going to want to leave their
social networks on their phones to go
check out your site they might check it
out once or twice but then they're going
to go back to watching YouTube videos or
checking their instagrams so for example
if you were to create dog jobs calm a
website for dogs to get jobs well number
one a lot of people are going to be on
mobile and they may want in that when
was the last time you bookmarked a
website on your phone number two a lot
of the people are busy using their
social networks and they don't really
want to be bothered to go register on
your website and then bookmark it and go
back to
over and over you're probably going to
want a nap the problem is building a nap
these days I think is pretty difficult
because most people spend ninety nine
percent of their time in the top ten
apps if you were to try to build an app
you're gonna have to be on Android and
iOS you're gonna have to learn these two
platforms at minimum and then getting
people to try to install this app and
keep it on their phone and revisit it
and make it a high quality experience it
just really requires a team at this
point which is why I think that the
mobile apps business it's pretty much
better left for these larger tech
companies that are able to afford having
hundreds or thousands of people working
on these apps alright so let me show you
some of these statistics that I've been
referring to number one desktop internet
usage is falling and mobile internet
usage is rising you can see desktop
internet is about 2.2 hours per day and
then mobile usage is about 3.1 hours per
day so that tells you most people are
using their phones and then we see here
mobile users are spending 87% of their
time in apps versus just 13% on the web
and in fact there's another statistics
here that shows that more than half of
smartphone users in the u.s. download 0
new mobile apps per month so even though
people are spending a lot of time on
apps they're not actually download the
new apps well which apps are people
spending their time in then and this was
the statistic that surprised me the most
97% of app usage is actually just in the
top 10 apps and of that 50% is spent in
just one app which are these top apps
well according to sensor tower is Tech
Talk YouTube Instagram whatsapp
messenger Facebook Netflix Google Maps
you've got Gmail Spotify Chrome Twitter
Pinterest Amazon snapchat so it's
essentially these large social network
platforms and my concern is when you go
out and you create your own app or
independent website you're trying to
take people off of these incredibly
sticky social networks where people
enjoy spending their time they don't
want to leave these platforms and that's
sort of evidenced by most people
downloading Xero apps per month
evidenced by people spend there 87% of
time in apps instead of 13% on the web
visiting your potential website overall
that doesn't mean that coding is useless
actually on the contrary coding is more
relevant than ever before it is
absolutely essential but our traditional
concept
of how to apply that clothing for
example by building an app or website
that appears to be no longer as
effective anymore in today's ecosystem
so where does that leave us
well first of all you need to understand
that it didn't used to be this way apps
need to go viral in order to succeed so
in the old days you were able to launch
like an iPhone app or a facebook app
Twitter app and it was able to go viral
and then you can start getting a lot of
users and then that would be financially
viable for you or you could be creating
a website and back in the day a lot of
the people didn't know how to build
websites if you built one it was
actually a pretty special thing and
people would go to it and they would
revisit it over and over so these days
how do you go viral what goes viral well
if everybody is on YouTube or instagrams
in my opinion you need to go viral on
these platforms in order to launch your
software business and not only that you
want to repeatedly be going viral on
these platforms if at all possible so
the way I see it you need to understand
the role that software plays in this
entire ecosystem where does it fit in
where can you leverage his strengths do
you just create a brand new app or
website well I don't think that's really
playing to the strengths I think what we
need these days is a very strong landing
page where people go to your website it
looks beautiful professional you make
your value statement right there and you
can do one of two things number one you
can just try to make the sale right
there
maybe you're offering some service to or
game and you just try to make the sale
right there or number two you can try to
collect their email address do some
email marketing later on and try to make
the sale that way but the fundamental
shift is that the software is now the
product and it needs to have a clear
value statement right away you're no
longer trying to create a sticky
destination website that people come
back over and over again it doesn't
really matter if people bookmark your
website anyway they probably won't in
fact you can probably assume that most
user behavior is so glued to these
social networks like YouTube and
Instagram that people just don't really
want to go anywhere else
they may visit your website for say one
minute and then they will never come
back so within that short amount of time
you need to show as much value as you
can and actually if you know this I'm
also using this YouTube channel as a way
to gain awareness for this business and
if you don't have a YouTube channel you
can also go find other influencers to
partner with an offer affiliate
partnerships with and by the way I'm
also offering affiliate partnerships for
my program if any of you are influencers
and want to help promote my
stuff let me know there'll be a link in
the description below so overall the
truth about programming is that I
believe that traditional apps and
websites just they don't really work
anymore it's just not that effective
anymore people aren't interested in
downloading your app or visiting your
website over and over again but they are
interested in useful products in which
they may visit your website once or
twice to check out your product and then
you try to make the sale right there and
then it's not so much about you trying
to accumulate a million users on your
app and then each user you're giving
them advertisements these days putting
ads on your website or app hoping that
people come back to your destination
site over and over again I think that's
just a fairly weak business model so
it's about using software to create an
actual product that has value that is
worth something that people are willing
to pay money for it could be like a tool
or Chrome extension a website or service
that offers some immediate value that
people need or it could also be about
the landing page having a really
beautiful professional landing page in
which people give you their email
address and then you can do email
marketing and you know plenty of people
are able to build entire businesses
purely on email marketing you barely
even need a website for that because you
just email people all the information
they need the behind-the-scenes work of
all this the automation the creation of
a digital product that you can deliver
at scale to thousands of people is where
I believe coding plays a central role in
today's ecosystem now before I wrap up I
want to say that coding has gotten
easier and harder at the same time and I
would encourage you to tackle the harder
parts the easier parts actually are
about building a website scaling it back
in the day that you should be very
difficult nowadays we have Amazon AWS
Google cloud containerization firebase
all these technologies to make launch an
app or website easy and because of that
I feel that the value of an app or
website is more diluted these days it's
just not that effective anymore and the
difficulty of this problem space has
shifted away from that technical side
and more towards this newer ecosystem
that's a fairly unexplored and figuring
out how coding can fit inside our modern
usage patterns it may involve becoming
very good at Facebook and Instagram ads
becoming good at influencer marketing on
YouTube or focusing purely on email
marketing campaigns and doing away with
websites and apps altogether Gmail is
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do for me I made a lot of blanket
statements so take what I said with a
grain of salt
it doesn't necessarily apply everywhere
let me know your thoughts on where
coding fits in today's ecosystem if you
liked the video give it a like and
subscribe I'll see you next time thanks
bye