Colin Walker - Latest Comments in Early adopters and a social media experiment.

Re: Early adopters and a social media experiment.

Seo Singapore — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:56:48 -0000

A lot of people place the importance of visionaries but I must say without the early adopters these visionaries would be nobody as well. Let's give some recognition to all the early adopters in the world.

Re: Early adopters and a social media experiment.

Marco — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:03:20 -0000

Great stuff as usual. To your last point - in this case I don't think early adopters necessarily need to be able to remember or even understand "how it is for those who don’t obsess over every nuance of online interaction" - in fact I think its detrimental to the process if they do. I don't want a professional test-driving a new car model I may buy someday with my driving habits in mind. I want them to test that car by driving it every bit as hard as their abilities will allow them to.

I think everyone keeps getting hung up because they are viewing these applications as if they were just another variation of what average users are used to - as if we were discussing a new search engine or email application. The reality is, even though we have become more and more used to sharing bits and pieces of information quickly from just about anywhere, the "anything, anytime, anywhere with anyone" capability that these new tools offer if completely, absolutely, unquestionably different than anything the world at large is used to. Once these tools become a part of our everyday lives (years and years away mind you) they will completely alter the way we live.

Re: Early adopters and a social media experiment.

Hutch Carpenter — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:28:12 -0000

I was waiting for this post Colin. Great take on the state of FriendFeed today. The biggest discussions are around social media. That's not a bad thing at this point in the company's history. As Mark says, the early adopters are talking about their favorite topic, but in doing so, they're giving the site a workout. Forward ourselves 2 or 3 years, and I can see a robust football discussion happening. Users discussing the latest in knitting patterns. Parenting discussions. Etc. The only limit are the assumptions we impose on the service today.

Re: Early adopters and a social media experiment.

colinwalker — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:20:39 -0000

Robin, very valid point but I think there is an element of not wanting to annoy our followers with potential noise. We generally have a group of 'friends' who expect to see a certain type of content, if there is too much noise are they going to stop following us, or are we just too narrow-minded about what we are doing?

Different types of content will no doubt be shared by the same source so it is hard to hide those items we don't want to see without also hiding those we do. This is why we need semantic or tagged based filtering - perhaps then we will extend our range of discussions without fear of upsetting those around us.

Re: Early adopters and a social media experiment.

Robin Cannon — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:52:15 -0000

I think early adopters are in some cases genuinely harming the take up of social media services on a wider level. What surprises me is that, if these services are as good as the early adopters claim, why are they limiting their own usage to tech related issues all the time.

I'm a social media junkie. But I don't talk about it *all* the time, even to other people who share the interest. I have the same interest in football/soccer, in movies, in sci-fi, etc. Those articles are rarely commented on or form the basis of discussion on Friendfeed, even by those people who puport to be big fans of the service. They seem to be fans only so far as they spend a lot of time discussing social media, and failing to utilise it more widely themselves.

Re: Early adopters and a social media experiment.

manuscrypts — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 03:25:11 -0000

the very fact that (mostly) only social media gets discussed means that the current early adopters have perhaps outlived the original definition of the term and are therefore, possibly viewing new products in a myopic way?

Re: Early adopters and a social media experiment.

zota — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:37:06 -0000

I'll be another datapoint for you. I work for a college IT department, I've been a web designer for more than a decade, I'm an early adopter for many tools, and I spend almost every waking hour with an open browser. Yet I have almost no interest in closely following the latest tech gossip. If Arrington, Calacanis or Scoble ever say something worthwhile, it'll find me (like it or not).

So I signed up for FriendFeed, got a steaming faceful of primping tech gossip, repeated and repeated endlessly off into the horizon... and haven't bothered to pay much attention to it since.

Re: Early adopters and a social media experiment.

Mark Dykeman — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:22:20 -0000

I think that early adopters are an important link in the chain of product introduction and adoption. Someone's got to help spread the word while working with the product designers to provide important feedback about the product. The number of people who make the most comprehensive use of a relatively sophisticated product will always be in the minority, but they do serve an important function in bringing the next wave of users to the table.