It’s less than 10 hours to the start of the Future of Web Apps conference in London, and I started to think about some interesting things to ask all the startups at the expo. I decided that, instead of asking the obvious things like “what does your app do?” it might be more interesting to focus on some of the bad issues we have with web applications these days. Here are the 10 probably really interesting questions (in no particular order) we will be asking at FOWA tomorrow:

1. Why would we really need this application?
2. Do I need to login to Facebook before I can use your application?
3. Do I need a Twitter account before I can use your application?
4. What other company does your corporate logo feel close to?
5. Do I need to register before I can even look at your application?
6. Do I need to re-add all my friends when I join your site?
7. If I join, will you start spamming my friends with invites?
8. If you get bought, will you screw over your users?
9. If you get bought, will you screw over your users?
10. Does your mom understand how to use your app?

Got more questions we should ask, then add them to the comments before tomorrow.

At the beginning of this month I wrote about why I thought invites for uninteresting webapps could more and more be considered a type of spam. I was blaming both the users that let the app invite everyone they wanted, and the apps that just didn’t keep record of who they already spammed.

Now, there is news of a new webapp named Quechup (I’m not linking to them on purpose) that recently took it to the next level by just inviting everyone in your address book, even if you have told them not to do that. Eventually this leads to a “virus” much like those old school email viruses that spread themselves by mailing everyone in the receivers address book. The app has been in the news quite a lot, and I think it proves some of my point, including the fact that it stupid that people are starting to regard invites as something normal without thinking.

Obviously this new trend shows an even worse trend of people giving their email login details to any random app! People should realize that email functions much like a single sign-on at the moment, meaning that with your email login details anyone could get access to any of your other websites. I hope more people will start to realize that we need to develop and adopt new technologies that will enable apps to intercommunicate without having to share the login details.

Recently I have been spoiled with invites for so called “private Betas“, so much even that I had to add some of these web companies to my spam list. I simply don’t even want to try out these web apps anymore, because they simply annoyed me too much.

What is the problem? It is that these web2.0 tools have every new user select everyone from their Gmail/Hotmail/YahooMail contact list and send them a mass invite. Not only is this not personal, it can also lead to more than 10 invites for one person. I already received 11 invites for Doostang, an app that I am not going to try, although it might be very useful. (I actually received more that 1 invite from 1 person! Thank you Chakib!)

I seriously like some of the new web apps, but in the beginning of the “invite”-hype it was an honour to get an invite simply because they were scarce. These days, an invite is as common as the air we breath (although I don’t consider air spam!) and I simply consider them spam because they annoy me and I can’t seem to unsubscribe from them. Invites these days are overrated, impersonal, and highly annoying.

So how can web apps change this phenomenon? A couple of things come to mind. First of all I would like to see a “refuse all future invites”-button that I can click to stop (so-called) friends from sending me invites. If I can’t do that, than an unwanted invite means as much to me as unsolicited mail - a.k.a. spam.

Secondly, I think that any product should be able to engage people to make contacts on their own. If people need to make contacts to further enjoy their product, then it will automatically motivate them to invite their friends. And if I get a personal invite from a friend via Twitter, MSN, or email, then creates so much more impact than some automated message. Obviously the problem that arises here is that if your product actually sucks, it makes sense to have people invite their friends automatically as soon as you can!

In the end I realized that any web app that has to use some kind of automated and impersonal invite scheme to got their users to invite their friends is probably a rubbish product to start with. So remember, if anyone send me loads of invites for the same product, I will automatically thank you for the “regard this product as useless”-notification you just virtually generated.