
Everything about Early Adopters - kingsidharth
http://www.64notes.com/early-adopters-essay
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swombat
I applaud the aim of the article, and there is certainly an assorted
collection of a few good tidbits about early adopters in there, but this
article's tone is too perky, the content is too diluted by the voice the
author used, and fundamentally there isn't that much solid advice. The site
byline says it's "Young entrepreneur's jot", and indeed the article feels like
it was written for a 10 year old.

I mean, wtf @

 _This is the main thing in whole article, I was just building the base till
now. (Yah! This is gonna be an essay… kinda)._

The author should learn to be more concise. This should have been a clear,
simple, straightforward, short article.

~~~
kingsidharth
Noted, will keep in mind next time I write.

~~~
swombat
One thing I try (and don't always succeed) in doing is to ask myself - if
someone who is very busy is going to read this article, can they extract the
value out of it quickly and efficiently?

There's two key things you could do to enable that:

1\. Use headings that summarise the text below; currently, your headings are
introductions to the text below rather than summaries. Of course you can't get
everything into a 5-word heading, but looking at the heading, the reader
should not only know what type of content is coming, but also largely what the
conclusion of it will be. A really good book on this topic is
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing-
Thin...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing-
Thinking/dp/0273710516/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291986844&sr=8-1)

2\. Summarise the key points at the end. A lot of people scroll through,
glance at the headings, then look at the conclusion, before they decide
whether to read the article. Summarising your points will, paradoxically, get
more people to read the full article (or at least dive into the points of
interest to them).

I believe that if you want people's attention, you need to show that you're
respectful of their precious and limited time.

~~~
kingsidharth
Great ideas! Will work with them next I sit to write. Thanks, early adopter :P

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alexwestholm
One issue that seems to pop out:

If early adopters are different in some way than the majority of the
population, how does this difference bear on the outcome of their input in
shaping the product? I guess that means answering "What is the difference?"
and "Is it meaningful?". Certainly companies in the past have faltered because
they paid too much attention to their early adopters without recognizing that
the needs being brought up were different from that of the overall user base.
Fail to take that into account, and when the early adopters move on, you'll be
left in the dust.

~~~
kingsidharth
I'd like clear my point with an example:Being geeky early adopter (different
from normal crowd), I can tolerate a few bugs and see javascript errors and
such. And even bear with bad UI. And with feedback, I help you prepare your
stuff for 'main stream'. And when I leave. You are already in your transition
period from early adopters to main-stream and you are ready for them.Problem
is not that they 'listen' too much. Problem is that they just listen - without
using their on brains. You got to compare feedback with your vision - not just
do what they ask for.

