The Bloatware war: The Attack of the Feature Requests

Jason over at 37 signals has posted an interesting article about how to handle feature requests from your customers,
http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/getting_real_forget_feature_requests.php

Essentially you should read them and forget about them. I agree with this philosophy. It may be construed as ignoring your customers, but really it is just the opposite. You need to listen closely to your customers; all of your customers. You need to focus on creating a product that best serves your customer base as a whole and creating every feature that is ever requested will not accomplish that goal. You must maintain simplicity and fight the anti-bloatware fight. Overall you are going to make a lot more people happy by sticking to your guns then by bowing to every request made. Again this does not mean you should ignore your customers. You need to listen to each and everyone and then use your talents to distill that information into the enhancements that will truly make your product better.