Where are the masses?
Is Squidoo inability to take off and reach the masses unique or maybe many of the so called web 2.0 companies need to re-examine their approach? Can it be that the concept behind many of these companies targets a small portion of the entire population?
I guess I am, at list somewhat, one of those early adopters. I enjoy technology for the sake of technology. I enjoy using a web site that was design well. I even pack my hard drive with many applications that nobody really need.
But even the most dedicated web 2.0 follower has to wonder who really need this company , or this . And when they coined the term software as a service , they meant to a real service not only a delivery method.
So before dreaming about being punched by Yahoo! Listen to this advice :
A good review in Techcrunch can get a company their first 5-25K beta users very quickly. However, I’d strongly caution entrepreneurs from taking their initial consumer adoption metrics and extrapolating them too far into the future. I believe startups will find it difficult to cross the “Techcrunch chasm” between the Web 2.0 geeks and Mainstreet USA.
If we could get access to the usage logs of the top 10 Web 2.0 properties, I would bet that their 10,000 most active users would all be the same.
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Rogel @ May 11, 2006
Every service that optimizes the online experience limits itself to that segment of the population that wants to experience more, but just doesn’t have the time. That’s not a problem that most people have.
Those who will fail are not the ones that have a small portion of the entire population, but the ones that can’t sustain on a small user base. If your RSS feed tagging and microformating service needs the MySpace user base to be profitable, you’re in for an unpleasent surprise.
This is a good point Asaf, however the question is not who will survive (and Squidoo maybe profitable) but if you make a different. I think that too many services missing to approach anybody but the early adopters.
I agree most won’t make it past early adopters. In fact, most will get the TechCrunch spike, but even the early crowd doesn’t stick around. Too much cool stuff, not enough time in the day.
My approach is to judge companies by one metric: can you make a killing from the early adopter crowd? If the answer is yes, you have a head start to go bigger.
If the answer is no, you run out of money before you can figure out how to cross the chasm.
It is good metric. I would ad another one - do you solve real life problem, if the answer is yes people will come.
I think Flickr is good example for that, they solved for me real life problem and this is why i’m a paying customer.
Definitely agree with that.
I’ve been wondering a lot about what “real life” problem means. Most of the people I talk to think it’s photo sharing. I tried several sites, and I think Flickr is better for some people, worse for others. Besides, I don’t think photo sharing is a real life problem begging to be solved.
Then there’s attention. How do I get people to pay attention to what’s going in my life? Or to pay attention to my works? Evey social interaction I have is defined by that. That’s a real life problem in my book. And that’s a problem Flickr solves brilliantly.
As a business that rocks. The people who value that attention are definitely willing to pay for a better service. The people who value that attention are also good at building buzz.
I agree.
And I was thinking about your first comment, some service are by definition not intended to the masses. For example your listing plugin for wordpress, this is something that intend to develop technological capability and is for now intend to very small group of users.
But most of these “services” just trying to capture enough traffic for long enough that Yahoo! will notice them and buy them.
Well, 1000tags.com is not a company. It’s more of a joke that took three days to develop. As for the other “companies”, I agree 100%
Three whole days? I hope it wasn’t full time job:)
Maybe I should have said “three nights”
I do have a *real* full time job.
I have to admit that the fact that 1000tags is a Joke was pleasant surprise, and I’m glad to admit that I made a mistake thinking it is real attempt to build a service
I call these “build for fun” sites. Some of them have amazing ROIs. They’ll never grow big enough to buy Google, but you get more than you invested.
Joking aside I realy dislike 1000Tags. I wrote about it awhile ago and I didn’t change my mind