Sarah I think about this every day because 75% of my clients want to make their way into mainstream Web use, but have absolutely no idea what this actual means and/or entails. We just finished a small survey, the results of which I will share with you once we've finished looking at the numbers. It will floor you -- things like, people who have no idea what RSS is, for example, still rate themselves as an 8.5 on a scale of 1-10 re: efficiency/effectiveness using the Web. There's what you you know, what you don't know, and what you don't know you don't know;) - Joshua Dilworth
The single worst thing about early adopters is they feel part of something exclusive. The second question makes the first question sound like a leap for attention rather than sincerity for the unexposed crowd. - Julian Baldwin
I still care. It's why I'm still interested in what Facebook is doing. - Hutch Carpenter
If you have a business and need to reach out to clients or customers who are at different places in their Web use, you must care. The idea is to help them innovate and bring them up to speed on how recent and future developments will benefit them—and THEIR customers. - Cathryn Hrudicka
I care in the way that I care about weather, or political polls, or music on terrestrial radio. It's like alternate history. - caleb phillips
It depends on your perspective. If you are someone like Scoble who's livelihood depends on knowing what is latest and greatest, then no you do not care about mainstream users. Others like myself care because some of the work we do is meant to be used by the masses. - Rob Diana
I don't this is why I still use <frame> and <blink> - Ben Jackson via twhirl
why should i worry about the people calling me the weird one? ;) @julian early adopter are an 'exclusive' group in that they do what others will do some years later. just like people competing in the olympics are an exclusive group as well. this does not say anything about what they are otherwise. but different to that, I know that things I work with today will go mainstream later. the only question is how to speed up the process. :) [and yes. i do care.] - Nicole Simon
I would much rather understand mainstream users than early adopters. - Chris Baskind
@chrisbaskind: so would i, because that's my client base...but that means SERIOUSLY slowing down. i work in a corporate environment, and only now are a FEW of the top execs are even cognizant of blogs, but for me blogs are so 1999 or 2004... but then for them, blogs don't really work well on blackberries. i simply can't begin to explain concepts like Twitter or FriendFeed without doing tons of remedial backfilling first...and still progress is SUH-LOWWW! and these are extremely SMART people offline. - .LAG
the moment we forget or ignore or leave behind the regular web users we might as well hang up our blogs because then we are doing nothing more than writing pointless babel that serves no purpose. The echo chamber will have won - Steven Hodson
Totally agree with Steve and Chris. We are the early settlers that will help shape the social media landscape for the time when the mainstream folks come and join us. I sure as hell don't want to be using these services to connect only to early adopters. - Adam Helweh
@steven, @adam: cool with those takes. but if we're the early settlers -- and i don't mean to go kumbayah on you here -- let's make sure that we're not setting ourselves up -- and the masses -- to get pimped on a global scale. with something like facebook, for example, I see how powerful it can be in helping long-lost friends re-connect, but it seems all of that is being created so that BigCo can sell more sh*t and BigGov can keep easier tabs on people, especially folks who pose not\ threat to anyone. - .LAG
@LAG I never thought of BIGgov, but so far I don't mind having more relevant stuff advertised to me. It beats paying for a service or seeing commercials on TV that rarely ever advertise anything I want. - Adam Helweh
@adam you may have a point on the ad filtering...but i guess it's because i work in the ad industry that i'm not so sure the real decision makers are going to use that information just to target ads at you; i'm inside the machine, and skeptical. on the politics thing, omg, what a treasure trove of nearly real-time insight (politics + social networking) can provide. obama speaks before 100K in berlin...what's the traffic and contributions to mybarack.com look like...an hour after he leaves the podium? - .LAG
if you can afford it sure but I guess most businesses can't - Joe Buhler
@LAG trust me these are things I wonder about a lot. Especially when I see such willingness to hand over our data to Web 2.0 with lousy track records for security and yet we yack them up as the greatest thing since slice bread. As for Big Gov I wrote about this some time ago about why would the government need something like Carnivore when we're so willingly handing everything over and willing to let them know where we are any minute of the day. All this is being foisted on the average web user as the coolest stuff and we're doing it. - Steven Hodson
we should just leave them all behind. - Peter Dawson
I care. Mainstream adoption is what keeps these little tools we know and love so much alive. VC won't keep pouring money into a service just so a bunch of early adopters can sit at the "cool" table. So go ahead and leave them behind - you'll be left behind when your newest toy runs out of money. - Shawn Farner
Mainstream web users and me just don't get along ;) - Jorge Escobar
Mainstream peeps matter because they make up the majority? Don't they... - Gordon Swaby via Alert Thingy
"Obviously I'm one of the bloggers you disagree with, so I guess I'm going to have to disagree right back at ya! ;) On the one hand, I admire your positive outlook on everything and, like Albert here says, "not a big deal." Yes, absolutely, in the grand scheme of things nothing that goes on with Twitter is a *that* big of deal. I live a good part of my life outside the internet and in comparison, whatever happens here is only marginally important in the greater context of my life as a whole. However, that being said, when analyzing what's occurring right now online as web services grow and change, Twitter is a shining example of what not to do. The main problem is that it was built incorrectly from day one. Other web apps should take note of this - you may think that you're just a fun little side project, but what's your plan B if you do become popular and need to scale up rapidly? Twitter's continuous issues are truly a worst-case scenario of what that looks like. So, although I..." - Sarah Perez
