DISQUS

Elijah Bailey (zu) · 6 months ago

Wow, excellent read. It seems obvious to imagine that system being, and it's obviously those who care about the details right up front that are those who shape its mainstreaming adopting effectiveness and vision.

I was enlightened by the reference to which you way that the twitter backlash is made by the early adopters community. It would also be logical to assume it as the shiny object is always theoretically external to us, but attainable in seconds as in months.

Reviewing, turning around the subject, tracking and announcing loud and clear for referencing, clouding the situation making those services react by sharp decisions, deciding on a change without the public knowing it was a situation tracked in the first place. Sometimes it's in its internal policies, sometimes it's in functionality.

All of these steps create the mechanics behind their developments and later success. And those who listened to the underlying unknowns gets even more recognition. Thanks again for those words of wisdom. ;p

Jessica Wilzig Gottlieb · 6 months ago

oh NO!

I'm hideously in the middle of entitlement, I hate it when I see myself in this stuff and it's not flattering.

kevinwmurray · 6 months ago

Great post.

StevenHodson · 6 months ago

You knew I'd have to drop in on htis one :).

One of the things that I think that as it is important that early adopters need to find the new and shiny I think it is equally important that we also provide a realistic (and critical) point of view about the things we work with and talk about.

If all we end up doing is giving the proverbial pat ion the back about everything we do a bigger disservice to our readers than if we were to write Pay-per-post or sponsored posts.

mcwflint · 6 months ago

Do you ever sleep? :)

Louis Gray · 6 months ago

I try not to sleep too often. I find the practice unproductive.

mcwflint · 6 months ago

And that makes it so much harder for the rest of us to close our eyes.

For me, it's not so much a rush to be the first with a shiny object. Instead, I just want a better way of doing things, believing that a solution must be out there and I just haven't found it.

mcwflint · 6 months ago

Actually, I just realized that if you're up and watching for the shiny objects, I can sleep and just wait for your sharing. Perhaps I should send you my list of challenges :)

awilensky · 6 months ago

Louis, I think this syndrome is now clustering around "real time streams". Everyone is writing posts and real articles about the messianic coming of real time updates; when it is hardly proven that real-time steams are advantageous or not.

I always thought that relevant and contextual was the real need, but now that everyone and the brother is streaming real time updates, that is the shiny new thing. ech.

Jesse Newhart · 6 months ago

Tools like Feedly and Toluu are nice but the real score is finding the large gold nuggets first or at least close to first. Keeping your ear to the ground and listening for the buzz across all of your networks so that when the next Facebook or Twitter sprouts its green shoots, you are there early to gain the advantages that come with early adoption ie knowledge, position, experience...
Spotting these green shoots has become pivotal in determining ones continued online prosperity. Like you wrote back in June "One month's golden boy can be next month's afterthought."

vanelsas · 6 months ago

"You can sit on the sidelines and see this happening everywhere. In fact, much of the backlash against Twitter of late has been from the early adopter community who has been largely ignored, in favor of the celebrity of the week, making those who pushed the service initially feel like they are unwanted."

This part of your post deserves a post on its own. There are many cases thinkable where keeping the early adopter crowd satisfied ends up leading to alienation of the service towards the users it was intended for.

In the case of Twitter I believe that they have fallen for a fundamental web 2.0 flaw. They have chosen to make growth more important than user value. The result of this choice is that when Twitter "left" to go mainstream, they got occupied with spammers and accounts "gaming the system" (i.e. 30K followers and 5 updates). Twitter could protect users from these practices, but seems not willing to do so as it would severely hurt their traffic figures.

susanbeebe · 6 months ago

Awesome post Louis!!

YOU are my favorite scout for finding the latest and greatest new shiny objects :)

Ok whatcha hidin' up your sleeve now?