Andrew Hyde lives in Boulder, Colorado and travels frequently.

Ignore Early Adopters

Your early adopters are a startups dream.  They use your service, tell all their friends, they report bugs, they love you, they really do.

And you should know that at a point, you need to ignore them.

I read about this topic in Robert Scoble’s Fast Company article this month, Passion Play.  What he says is exactly what I thought before working in startups, a good read.

Ignore Early Adopters

Friendfeed is having a hard time.  It is listening to early adopters, building a product for them.  Pretty cool for the select few, but in doing that, they have driven away quite a few people that would have used it, myself included.

I identify myself as a horrid early adopter because I find every bug your product has.  I tried friendfeed and thought it was neat, but not for me.  This happens often for me.  My next step is to listen to my friends to see if they are using it or getting benifit from the service.  Most services do, and I end up getting back into it.  Twitter was an example.

What do people have to say about the use of FriendFeed?  “Echo chamber.” “Is anyone that isn’t big actually using this?” “A total waste of my time.”

Very few of my friends have found utility in it.  The only thing I find interesting about it is it does a much better job of indexing my twitter stream in search results. No amount of likes, side conversations or random flickr pictures I find from it will make it better, this product is built for those in the web that are power users, and that makes a product that is hard to use casually.

The kindle is selling just fine, even though Robert hated it.  Everyone that I know that has one loves it, and tells their friends frequently.

The early adopters that they built the service for, the ones who left MySpace for FaceBook for Twitter for Pownce for Jaiku are leaving them, chasing the next shiny object (which isn’t a negative thing at all).

FriendFeed’s numbers are flattening out.

And more people are trying to get me to join plurk, which just horrifies me.

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Andrew Hyde

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Comments

12 responses to “Ignore Early Adopters”

  1. Matt Emmi Avatar
    Matt Emmi

    Andrew, Have you read “Crossing the Chasam”? It directly addresses the differences in early adopters and early majority customers. The single best read of my MBA, and very pertinent to your post here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm

  2. Will Sargent Avatar
    Will Sargent

    I can so relate. Most early adopters have bright shiny object syndrome; they pick a technology or a website because “it's new!” or “it's the wave of the future” and then they're off onto the next thing before they've even found the problems with the existing technology.

    I'd be fine with early adopters if they were just 'there at the time', but they're not — they're a particular demographic, and a fickle one at that.

  3. Jon Avatar
    Jon

    'Early-adopters' has become a prize almost, a label sought after by those in the tech community, as a mark of someone forward thinking. It seems like one of the biggest problems with the tech community is that it is so incestuous…with so many applications being made, is anyone stopping to wonder if these have any resonance with non-techies?
    Anyways the problem with chasing that early-adopter label is that it really becomes much more about who is using the latest app, like a tech version of keeping up with the Jones' … and less about someone seeing a great product and using it because it simplifies or somehow betters their lives.

  4. BugFrog Avatar
    BugFrog

    Many game designers run into a similar issue. GD's are hardcore game users and start to make a game that appeals to their own demographic. When the game is done, only hardcore gamers are into it, and each hardcore gamer has a different idea of what the perfect game is. New Game A might hit that target for a minor percentage of of the market, but it will miss for a bunch more.

    Experienced designers will try to make the game accessible and fun for many tastes, game goals, and usage patterns. Leveraging the early adopters as advocates is key. If they get involved and talk up the game, it gets a good reputation in groups that are considered knowledgeable. Then the second and third wave adopters find it and get involved. The churn of hardcore gamers can be volatile, so plan to keep or exit those players. Don't just abandon them.

    Rambling conclusion: Pay attention and plan for when your audience shifts from early adopters to second (and eventually mass) market.

  5. andrewhyde Avatar
    andrewhyde

    Not yet, just ordered it!

  6. andrewhyde Avatar
    andrewhyde

    always rough, but sometimes they really are right… startup to startup..

  7. andrewhyde Avatar
    andrewhyde

    I have always been amazed by game designers… so much passion, so much time.

    Great example.

  8. jeremyvaught Avatar
    jeremyvaught

    Plurk?! Is that a joke? Because even I have used it and moved on when it was obvious it was a huge time suck.

  9. andrewhyde Avatar
    andrewhyde

    I really wish it was 🙂

  10. firewallender Avatar
    firewallender

    Plurk. Ughhhhhh. So unsightly.

  11. seotest Avatar
    seotest

    those things look creepy, but its ok,
    thanks for the game designer, they are amazing

  12. Busby SEO Test Avatar
    Busby SEO Test

    Many game designers run into a similar issue. GD's are hardcore game users and start to make a game that appeals to their own demographic. When the game is done, only hardcore gamers are into it, and each hardcore gamer has a different idea of what the perfect game is. New Game A might hit that target for a minor percentage of of the market, but it will miss for a bunch more.

    Experienced designers will try to make the game accessible and fun for many tastes, game goals, and usage patterns. Leveraging the early adopters as advocates is key. If they get involved and talk up the game, it gets a good reputation in groups that are considered knowledgeable. Then the second and third wave adopters find it and get involved. The churn of hardcore gamers can be volatile, so plan to keep or exit those players. Don't just abandon them.

    Rambling conclusion: Pay attention and plan for when your audience shifts from early adopters to second (and eventually mass) market.

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