"How to make something people want?"
patio11: Can I give a suggestion?  Get off the Internet.I don't mean that in a bad way.  I just mean that the type of person who, when they have a problem, thinks: "You know, I bet there is some social networking service out there where I can post about this problem in a real pretty AJAX-y looking form and then Twitter about it to my friends" already has plenty of people solving their problems.(They also make terrible customers, because one of their problems is that people keep asking them to pay for things, despite those things not being iPods.)Instead of using the Web 2.0 darling, get out there and talk to Real People who have Real Problems.  They work too hard.  They don't see their kids enough.  They don't make enough money.  They are very willing to pay for solutions to any of the above three, but they might not even realize that solutions are possible!  (99.9% of people who purchase my software never knew there was software available to do what it does until they got to my site, if you read their search queries.)[Edit: Incidentally, don't ask Real People what they want.  Ask them what their problems are.  A lot of my customers see their problem as "I like playing bingo but it takes several hours to make cards by hand."  You know what the preferred solution was for years?  "I should spent a lot of money laminating the cards that I made by hand, so that I can use them again next year."  It never occurred to most of them to ask for something that would make bingo cards in a few minutes for less than the price of laminating a set.]