Do you know the law? A lot of people probably don't know the law as well as they should. Yet, the same people abide by the law. Who first established law? A group of early adopters who knew they couldn't make everyone happy. And their intentions? To create laws that would benefit the greatest number of citizens. Now, is technology any different? Not in my opinion.
Yesterday, I started a conversation about How Early Adopters Pull The Web. The most sensitive point I made is one on the growing collective intelligence of the early adopter crowd who holds the ability to choose the best features and spawn a new generation of web users who are more experienced and understood than the previous generation. That's a mouth full, you might want to re-read that or at least give it a second thought.
Steven Hodson reciprocated with an analysis of Happy early adopters don't equal success, which really fired up a discussion on FriendFeed. He counters the argument I mentioned above when he writes,
It is great that all these hot to trot start-ups involve the early adopters to help them stress test systems and build up the word around them. This can be a double edge sword though especially if these start-ups concentrate to hard on trying to make their service the ideal tool that the early adopters have been looking for. They can take all the suggestions from people like Robert Scoble they like but he'll be the first one to tell you that his needs aren't the same as the mainstream.
I see exactly where you're coming from Steven and you may even be right, but here are my reasons for why I disagree. Functionality is a governing principle similar to law in that not every user is going to like it or feel they benefit from it equally as much as the next guy. These two variables are unchangeable in the complex equation for understanding users (or how people will respond to governing principles), we have no choice but to accept it. Even so, the law holds value just like the functionality of a service will hold value under the same circumstances. Think of the variables as unknowns.
Maybe we need a web that's a little more flexible? Interchangeable parts helped our physical economy in the past and continues to play a role today. Would the same idea in concept help our virtual economy? I bet it could work on top of base features, just like car production, where you take what they give you and mod it only so much with your personal preference in mind. And that's what most people do, take the base model or add a few features, while less people mod the entire car themselves.
We're not all engineers and we're not all programmers. The reason car production works as well as it does is the engineers determine what base features are best. We know they aren't the best for everyone, but nonetheless, they have more experience and understanding of what will give the company an edge by satisfying the customer. Could you imagine if we all went to the dealership and said I want to design my next car from scratch. We'd pick all the parts, ones that don't mix and match unless someone classified our next step in the process based on previous selection. What a procedure that would be, the engineers would be pissed too, they don't want their name associated with that car.
Sometimes you have to let decisions rest in the hands of those most interested and experienced. Look at where car production is today. A group of early adopters surrounded the first car and now a group of car enthusiasts have emerged more intelligent and understanding of what people need (most people don't know what they need, they need some baseline). If those early adopters didn't push auto production from the beginning, then who would have picked up the innovation? Not the mainstream, they weren't interested in it until someone built them a base model they could add features to.
That's our role now. To be interested enough to show users how far we can stretch these tools. To introduce features to users who would have never thought of the idea (because they lack experience) and fall in love with it. These things will start happening after we have strong base models and offer a way to play with additional options. That's why open-source is successful. We're all using a base model of WordPress and then we mod the functionality by using plugins, themes etc. The real money making generation of the web is yet to come? We're spending our time building base models so that we have better packages to offer mainstream users, who will build a portion of their experience on top of that foundation.
We needed an early adopter crowd to establish law, which can be amended and helped get us to where we are today. Auto production, the same thing. What's common between both examples? It took time to get to a point where they were ready to go mainstream. The web is no different and it's young. Early adopters need time to play around with features, suggest new ones and talk about experiences to build base models that are of interest to the mainstream user. If we don't do it, they definitely won't. Field of Dreams did offer good advice, "if you build it, they will come."
Steven writes a strong conclusion worth talking about.
Start-ups don't get rich from making early adopters happy. Venture capitalists don't make their money back from catering to the early adopters. That pot at the end of the rainbow is in the land of the mainstream. So the early adopter might be a good friend to slap your stuff around with but don't count on them to be the ones to make you rich.
What defines rich? Do all entrepreneurs care about getting rich? The answers are relative and fuzzy. Wikipedia went on to earn money, not nearly as much as other successful companies built to earn profit, but more than most people have. Maybe the online business model should be non-profit, that way we build and help develop services that are looking to reach a wider audience from the beginning.
