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I think you're missing my point. Find a large group of less Internet savvy folks to target and build a product for them. Pulled from my article: 1. Normals sti

I think you're missing my point. Find a large group of less Internet savvy folks to target and build a product for them. Pulled from my article: 1. Normals stick around a lot longer and are far more loyal than early adopters. 2. Normals are friends with other Normals, which propagates the cycle. 3. The Normals group is a larger market than the early adopters and techies group. 4. Normals appreciate simple, so it's easier and less time consuming to build a product for them. Further reading on Chris Dixon's blog: http://cdixon.org/2010/01/22/techies-and-normals/ http://cdixon.org/2010/01/22/techies-and-normals/

mstevens 17y ago
I agree with you in that it could be a good market segment to go for, but I think there's a lot of potential value in other market segments. For example, the ISP I use targets technical users, and they seem to be doing quite nicely.
- spencerfry 17y ago
  Oh. There's certainly room for building products/services for technical users. A lot of people do that well and make a lot of money doing just that. It's just a lot more difficult to penetrate the market and there's less room for massive scale. Your users are inherently more tech savvy, will voice their opinion far more often, and be a lot more critical of your service.
  - mstevens 17y ago
    True, true, I was just reacting to the "this is the only market segment anyone is ever allowed to go for" tone.
skmurphy 17y ago
It's not a one bit encoding of "Hacker vs. Normal" and early adopters are different from technologists. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_chasm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_chasm Technologists enjoy new things even if they don't work, early adopters are trying to solve a problem but don't mind going first as long as it works. Pragmatics (early majority) want to solve a problem using tools that other pragmatics are also using because they want the comforts of a whole product. Conservatives (late majority) are very cost conscious and want it dead simple. Laggards make do with pre-existing solutions until they are no longer available at a reasonable price. By the way, it's extremely difficult to build simple products that work reliably. They always come later. It's much easier to build an innovative productive that is partially reliable but provides functionality or performance that is not available.

mstevens 17y ago

I agree with you in that it could be a good market segment to go for, but I think there's a lot of potential value in other market segments. For example, the ISP I use targets technical users, and they seem to be doing quite nicely.

spencerfry 17y ago
Oh. There's certainly room for building products/services for technical users. A lot of people do that well and make a lot of money doing just that. It's just a lot more difficult to penetrate the market and there's less room for massive scale. Your users are inherently more tech savvy, will voice their opinion far more often, and be a lot more critical of your service.
- mstevens 17y ago
  True, true, I was just reacting to the "this is the only market segment anyone is ever allowed to go for" tone.

skmurphy 17y ago

It's not a one bit encoding of "Hacker vs. Normal" and early adopters are different from technologists. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_chasm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_chasm Technologists enjoy new things even if they don't work, early adopters are trying to solve a problem but don't mind going first as long as it works. Pragmatics (early majority) want to solve a problem using tools that other pragmatics are also using because they want the comforts of a whole product. Conservatives (late majority) are very cost conscious and want it dead simple. Laggards make do with pre-existing solutions until they are no longer available at a reasonable price. By the way, it's extremely difficult to build simple products that work reliably. They always come later. It's much easier to build an innovative productive that is partially reliable but provides functionality or performance that is not available.