Comments on: Ask not what social media can do for you…

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:35:38 +0000

Thanks for stepping back at looking at the situation with pragmatism. I think one of your most salient points — myself being both an early adopter & an evangelist — is that we who fit into either (or in my case, both) of these categories: “must accept that no single tool will achieve ubiquity – get over it. Different groups have differing needs and there will not be one tool to please them all.” Stepping back and periodically addressing needs and benefits regarding specific tools is a great piece of advice.

By: Web Success Diva

Web Success Diva — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 06:27:37 +0000

You are absolutely on point, with regards to what social media is outside of the early-adopters crowd. Too many try to follow their actions and get bogged down by the sheer, dynamic nature of social media technology. Great post.

Maria Reyes-McDavis

By: Robin Cannon

Robin Cannon — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 18:53:53 +0000

We're definitely in the honeymoon period as you suggest. We're in the boom, with everyone piling in with the *hope* that they can take advantage of the initial media interest and be a success. It's fractured and fragmented. Basically this is the Web 2.0 version of the initial .com boom, and probably with even less of an idea of how to monetise the services and businesses. It's fascinating quite how obvious the parallels are and how it seems that people are falling into exactly the same trap again.

You're right. The success of the most social networking tools is going to be achieving a functionality outside the early adopter market. I'm not entirely sure how many of them are even thinking about that. They have to be incredibly simple to use, almost entirely intuitive, and offer value to all,.

By: notes, thoughts, ideas and responses » How Early Adopters Pull The Web

notes, thoughts, ideas and responses » How Early Adopters Pull The Web — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:00:00 +0000

[...] for improvement may not necessarily meet the demands of a general population, early adopters do a great job of weeding out definite truths and tails, so that other users don’t have to. Sometimes services go overboard [...]

By: colinwalker

colinwalker — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 02:02:42 +0000

Ryan, I was, of course, semi-referring back to your post: http://tillingthesoil.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/...

By: ryanbrymer

ryanbrymer — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:56:14 +0000

Colin,
Wise and well-spoken as always. This certainly echoes the discussions of yesterday. I'm very much at the same point as you on this issue.