i hope you're planning on ridding yourself of all those old girlfriends in your basement :-P

On a serious note, I think this was a good essay for guys and girls. The reason we buy so much stuff is everyone inherently wants to be noticed and to feel important. Like Paul said, companies have done a terrific job at making us think stuff makes you important. On my high school senior trip one of the girls brought an entire suitcase just for her shoes. Each of the 14 pairs of shoes made her feel more important. My question is how do we make people think that our web applications will make them as important as their shoes do?

That's probably not a very good thing to pursue. People who feel important on account of their shoes do so out of stupidity. Capitalizing on people's stupidity is generally unfulfilling, and the success is hard to predict, because you can't relate to your customers. And why bother, when you can instead create something genuinely useful, for smart people and idiots alike?

"My question is how do we make people think that our web applications will make them as important as their shoes do?"

The standard answer is to make the application that would be your homepage if someone else had made it by now.

Don't most people have blank home pages to have faster browser start times? I haven't had a home page for years.

Google loads REALLY quickly. I don't notice the difference between a blank page and Google, and I live in the US, where broadband speeds are supposed to be woefully inadequate, per some recent article on reddit. :)

Google toolbar in firefox is faster

I meant it figuratively (I usually do the blank homepage thing, too).

I figured :)