-
Website
http://avc.com/ -
Original page
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/06/what-drives-consumer-adoption-of-new-technologies.html -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
All Comments
peer pressure - "so many people i know are into this, its not so alien, I should try it" (facebook, iphone, twitter)
media saturation - "i keep hearing so much about this, i should check it out" (facebook, iphone, twitter, wii, blogging, guitar hero, rock band, most "green" things)
familiarity - "oh that's new but so similar to what I already know and like, why not?" (mafia wars, hulu, twitter, pandora)
anxiety and insecurity - "holy moley it feels like everyone is into this, i don't want to be a luddite or out of fashion, i better check it out" (iphone, twitter, facebook, most "green" things)
Albert Einstein said (paraphrasing):
"Nuclear energy changes everything... except for the way people think."
;)
In 14+ years of product work, I've realized that most people don't have the time or inclination to understand how powerful tools work. Give them a blank canvas and they'll stare at it and go away. Give them something that outlines a framework and then they can see how it can be adapted to their needs.
Even in working with enterprises I've run into this. When we went in with a platform that could do anything, they didn't get it. We then created packages that highlighted various things that could be done with the platform. Then the clients could more easily see how it could do those things plus a few others that were specific to their needs.
The initial limitations on FB helped to define those frameworks.
I also think the best ideas are the ones which leaves room for exogeneous innovation / appropriation.
eg.
The iPhone became a portable console => I doubt this was fully intentional on APPL's side (or they are pretty damn good visionaires)
Twitter became what it is thanks to new use cases / applications coming from the outside
Facebook was only targeting students (from specific universities) at the very beginning
Sometimes the best products / innovations are the ones which are open for everybody else to innovate on top of them. I call this innovation^2 (squared).
Finally products need to be simple, viral, usable, and FAST (eg. to adopt, understand, use etc.) - users have less and less time available for new products.
I've discussed this concept through the years with a number of companies in regards to digital music, but the concept is the same for all technologies, I believe. The most important engine driving consumer adoption of new technologies is when they remove an artificial barrier to consumer desire. I describe this as "consumers abhor a vacuum." The company that can fill this vacuum will have consumers flocking to its doors.
This need to fill the vacuum is so great that if the tools are there they will do it illegally. The poster child for this was Napster, which removed a very long-time vacuum between consumer desire (the ability to consume individual songs and easily organize and listen to them) with a business model that required that consumer desire to be unfulfilled: Record companies whose profits were pegged exclusively to album sales.
An interesting sidenote to the above is why Pressplay failed and Apple did not. Apple combined the demand for singles with the ease-of-use and consumption that consumers demanded. Pressplay and the others did not. Still, it is worth noting that even without a hardware player, Napster was a true phenomenon.
Ultimately, this is why we see piracy raging. Consumers want immediate access to content when, where, and how they want it. I commented in your blog in the past about this in regards to Youtube. To my mind, Youtube's growth was exploding directly due to it filling the untapped need of consumers to view premium video content on their terms. This goes directly to the success of Hulu, which is taking that desire and finally fulfilling it in a legal way. Youtube is still the free video hosting site on the web, but its role as a host of legal premium content is being lost to Hulu.
As to your examples:
iPhone: Fulfills the untapped demand of consumers wanting to take the Internet with them. Its touch interface and large screen and beautiful browser changed the game in this space. Lesson? The demand for a rich mobile Internet experience was greater than the demand for a keyboard.
Facebook: Well, I would have used Myspace or even Friendster here, as it was the new technology that first took off, but Facebook works as an improvement on the concept. The consumer vacuum here was for a home on the Internet where it was easy to add content and share it with friends. Myspace and Facebook basically created what Geocities was trying to do and what The Well should have become.
Wii: To my mind, consumers have wanted a more immersive gaming experience since they saw Tron or saw the Holodeck on Star Trek. The Wii took that concept to another level with its controllers. The next innovation here is an even more immersive virtual reality experience, I'm sure.
Hulu: I already mentioned this, but it is (finally) giving consumers their favorite TV shows on demand. The only thing missing here is the connection to the television box. This is one of those artificial barriers between what consumers want and the profit model of the industry. It will break down sooner or later, but in the mean time others will rush to fill that gap as best they can. Boxee's efforts via Apple TV being a good example.
Flipcam: A video camera that you can take anywhere and can easily use to post online to share with friends and family. If you're a parent, this is a big "duh."
Rockband: Every consumer everywhere wants to be able to play an instrument but not have to take 20 years of lessons. Now you can. It's the same reason flight simulator and multiple other massively popular games that let you aspire to being what your not took off.
Mafia Wars: I'd need to look more closely at this to speak definitively.
Blogger: You nailed it: A printing press for everyone, with syndication built in, to boot. Everyone thinks their opinion matters. Now they have their digital newspaper to prove it. Note that simplicity and focus were also important here. You could post text on a Geocities site, for example, but it was not designed for "publshing" like Blogger was. Ev Williams is a genius at recognizing consumer vacuum's by the way.
Pandora: Consumers would LOVE a radio station that lets you skip songs you don't like, played more music closer to their tastes, and yet still presented a passive listening experience if they wanted like "normal" radio. Enter Pandora. This reminds me of my family's favorite XM feature: The ability to rewind songs on my car Skyfi receiver. A day doesn't go by that I'll be listening to terrestrial radio and a song my daughters like will come on, and they'll go "rewind it, rewind it," and--alas--I can't.
Twitter: Twitter is at once the simplest and most powerful of concepts. In one sense, it is nothing more than reality TV for the rest of us. In another sense, it is a public diary for our friends and family. In another sense, it is a news source. In another sense, it is a way to asynchronously chat with people we like while people we don't know but like us can follow along. It is for these and other reasons that I think that, of all the technologies you mention above, Twitter will be ultimately the biggest and most disruptive. It does more than just fill a consumer vacuum, it is an infrastructure that fills a number of them. At the same time. And simply.
By the way, I would add Tivo to this list.
Jim Kerr
VP/Strategy
Triton Media
With Mafia Wars, Facebook, Twitter, the connection with your friends is clear.
I'm less clear about the others, particularly the two hardware elements. Although, as always, seeing other people using something a lot is a good incentive to try it yourself.
My instinct is that humans are social animals, and tools that make it *easier* and *more fun* to be sociable are winners.
- sexyness to get people to first use
- socialness to get them addicted
- usefulness to keep them
Whereas the problem is defining sexy, social, and useful.
Examples from my life:
- Hulu is sexy, but not useful in Europe, so it did no stick with me.
- Twitter is sexy and social, so I'm addicted. It is not 100% useful yet so we will see if I stay with it
- Facebook is all of this (although the sexy wears off), so I'm using it a lot
Maybe those above were first to offer "ease of mass adoption."
iPhone - phone and email + all kinds of different apps for everything
Facebook - basic communication + groups, apps
Wii - simple games that anyone can play + games that are more challenging more like Playstation or Xbox
Hulu - easy to watch great content
FlipCam - easy make videos
Blogger - easy to start blogging, easy interface + ability to really customize
Twitter - easy blogging & following + api and tools to fully leverage the platform
The reason I think is marketing and the group of users that are the early adopters. Having the right group of early adopters is key. You could have the coolest, easiest to use, most interesting thing in the world but if you don't market it with the right angle to the right group of influencers, it will never take off. For example, Apple had the iPod for a couple years before it took off.....why didn't it take off sooner. Marketing and getting to the right group of influencers.
1. market to key influencers. I saw it on your blog, got used to it, and convinced Rob to put it on his blog. But that said, I'm not a key influencer. I will only maybe get 1-2 people to use it. You need key influencers to promote disqus and have a good reason to. i.e. Yardbarker.com is a network of sports blogs. They distribute out ad code and operate a sports blog ad network in addition to their hub site (ala Glam). Disqus creates more page views and more ad dollars so if blog networks like Yardbarker.com promote it and insist that their bloggers use it, it will spread faster in a market where people are used to cutting and pasting code into their blog.
2. bundle with blogger and wordpress and other blog software and make it easier to install. cutting and pasting code and installing WP plugins is annoying and takes too long. Like Rob said above needs to be easier for bloggers to adopt it and/or a stronger key benefit to the blogger than "your users will love it"......needs to be more like......disqus doubles your page views and makes you more ad dollars by X% on average and increases time spent for your users by X.XX minutes per session.
Maybe something like Zemanta in nature. A tool for the blogger, not the commenter.
(Unless you really want to track what I think about Orthodox Jewish day school tuition, my highly regimented dating life, and what I think about various brands of makeup...)
I've wanted to install it on my Typepad blog for months, but I'd need to use Advanced Templates first.
It's Great once it's installed and running though, and as a commenter, it's terrific to be able to log-into it on various blogs, so definitely social and useful there...
They'll still need to work on sexy though :)
If the blog platforms were more supportive of third party comment systems, disqus' life (and users too) would be a lot better.
But that's no excuse. This is a challenge for disqus and they need to rise to it
Disqus requires someone installing it on the blog. I'm sure true end
users (commenters) don't care so much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innov...
#massmedianerd
First use is about creating the best possible user experience when you deploy your service for the first time amongst your target users. First use is about answering the question,”Is a user willing to put in the effort to learn about this new technology and incorporate it in his current habits”? The answer in any case is that willingness is related to either solving a problem or creating another type of value for the user. If this isn’t obvious from the start, then the user is not committed to put in the effort of integrating this technology into his life. Note that this isn’t necessarily related to design or usability or complexity. It helps if your development scores well on those factors. Bottom line however is whether or not the user conceives enough value to put the effort into it.
I've written several posts on this. Here is one if interested:
http://vanelsas.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/why-fi...
”Is a user willing to put in the effort to learn about this new technology and incorporate it in his current habits”? "
"Simple" not only refers to "simple to use," but to "simple to understand the value of."
To me this point and the point of this blog post is about the need for a clear value proposition. People are willing to invest a lot of effort into adopting something if the perceived value is high. Chemotherapy is a horrendous experience and doesn't always work, but given the alternative (death) it's a no brainer. Alternatively, if the perceived value is low, the less forgiving users will be. I'm not going to register, verify an email, and create a profile when all i want to do is play a game of solitaire on the train for five minutes. **This is reminds me of the relationship between price elasticity and wealth (or is it income?).
Clearly and concisely articulating the value proposition is a real problem for lots of great technology platform companies*, twitter included (it's NOT ironic that Fred went through and did just that to get this conversation started). It's not as if people havent heard of these platforms! Everyone COULD benefit from joining Facebook or using Twitter but not everyone realizes it. That the most common thing I hear from non-twitter users "why the hell would i do (need) that?" The main reason that people try these services, despite having no idea what they are, is "everyone else is using it (therefore it must have value)." The main reason services don't stick is because people give up before they find value.
This is where Alexander's concept of "first use" comes up. I bet Marketers try a lot harder to "get" twitter than Accountants because they know it's something they are supposed to be using. Twitter is doing a lot to improve this by suggesting friends and auto-populating new accounts with popular tweeters. It's getting better but still needs work.
Ultimately, the proportional relationship between perceived value and one's willingness to expend effort to adopt is more people than products. This is classic Geoff Moore/technology adoption curve. Technologists find the perceive value in technology for technology's sake. They could care less if something is "simple" or easy to use or about sharing or whatever as long as it is technically interesting or new or difficult. Early adopters find technology interesting, but only because of it's ability to affect disruptive change. They are willing to put up with a lot of pain because they perceive huge benefits. The majority just wants to keep pace. Skeptics actually perceive negative value and thus will hold out until non-adoption itself becomes so painful that it is easier just to capitulate! Different people see different value in different things.
In conclusion, "simple" not only refers to "simple to use," but to "simple to understand the value of." A "clear value proposition" should make the list of drivers of consumer adoption. Thanks.
@brett1211
http://timetogetstarted.wordpress.com/
PS. Fred and Daniel, speaking of summarizing, can we get some yelp-like technology to parse out repeated phrases? Also what about multimedia comments (see below)?
PSS. Alex's blog is great. People should check it out.
*People are insensitive to large relative prices increases for goods that are cheap relative to their wealth, but they are very sensitive to small relative price increases on goods that a large purchases relative to their wealth. In English, I am virtually indifferent between a $1 pack of gum and a $1.10 pack of gum (10% price increase), but raising the price of a house from $100K to $110K (also 10% increase) is game changing. To complete the analogy, the amount of friction users are willing to overlook is proportional to the value they perceive. Thus I believe that a users initial perceptions are all the more important if the value proposition is marginal or unclear..
**Drop.io is another example of a great platform technology and "great" product (simple, sexy, social, useful etc) that risks missing consumer adoption because people don't fully appreciate all of the things you can do with it. Getdropbox is much less versatile product that may ultimately win because it is much more intuitive. (Hey Fred and Daniel, when do I get to embed a Compete.com chart in my disqus comments ? When do we get multimedia comments?) I think this is why we keep seeing "simple" and "uncomplicated" and "focused" come up as important drivers of consumer adoption.
I love the marketers vs accountants comparison!
There are several advantages when you focus on First Use:
- It helps you focus on the user experience, instead of the nr of features you implement
- It prevents creativity getting in the way of delivery
- It addresses the most important question when building a new service: ”Is a user willing to put in the effort to learn about this new technology and incorporate it in his current habits”?
We are using this in practice every day, and we are still learning as we go along :-)
<clip>
1.) Relative Advantage: The degree to which an innovation is perceived to be better (e.g. more favorable economics, more social status) than the idea it supersedes. In technology products, the "rule of thumb" is that if the product isn't about 10x better than whatever solution people are currently using, they won't be willing to overcome the switching cost.
2.) Compatibility: The degree to which an innovation is perceived to be consistent with existing values, past experiences, current processes and the needs of potential adopters. Said another way, how much of a behavioral change do I (as the consumer) have to make?
3.) Simplicity: The degree to which an innovation is easy to use and understand (intuitive appeal).
4.) Trialability: The degree to which an innovation can be experimented with on a limited, low commitment basis.
5.) Observability: The degree to which the results (benefits) of an innovation are visible to others. Apple's white iPod / iPhone headphones are a great example - everyone can see (and knows) what kind of music player you have just by looking at you.
</clip>
(from http://www.amiablecoder.com/2009/03/browser-gam...)
For example, Google enters a crowded search market with technology so much better that early adopters switch from existing alternatives but it remains simple enough that several years later my Mum and everyone she knows probably use it daily.
iPhone executes the Apple strategy perfectly -- "Minority Report" kind of interface is brilliant, design/simplicity gives it the cool/unconventional association.
Facebook, Pandora, Twitter -- all very simple, subtle design, easy to use, self-evident UI.
- Users create content in discrete, digestible, chunks -- keeping the content ever-changing but the interface remains simple.
- Multi-channel distribution (web, iphone, mobile)
Evangelists become not just passionate users who spread the word, look the part, reach out to influencers (some of this bleeds into Gladwell).
Evangelists also become developers -- iPhone apps, Facebook and Twitter apps. Open API standards allow developers to do the programming outside of the company. Technology brands become app launch platforms. When adopted, innovation, development and marketing are free for the brand and cheap for the developers themselves (which is key - it allows small teams to execute app development, marketing and distribution - to reach micro-audiences the tech brand couldn't).
When advertising isn't economic, Incorporating an easy payment and distribution system is key, integrating iPhone apps with iTunes was a great move.
Lee
Another one? Google Docs. No need to buy expensive MS software anymore, nor to upgrade & update.
Dropbox is still rather far from mass adoption but since Cloud Computing is buzzing, my guess is that in about 6 months, the concept is adopted.
2. An unexpected utility and reward for using it.
3. Bridges the next level of adoption for the category.
Whether it can actually enrich that person's life or is actually suitable for them is another story.
iPhone: The UI of *every* other phone was torture. People had been saying "I wish Apple made a phone" for years. Granted the superpower of a great browser in a phone "the internet in your pants."
Wii: Quit the PS and Xbox "more horsepower" arms race and reinvented gameplay.
Facebook: Not a total mess like MySpace.
RockBand: Wish fulfillment, grants superpowers. Music is the most powerful art form. It's tribal, it reaches into our brains and makes us feel things.
Google: "Don't make me think." Other search engines were big messy portals spattered with ads.
Twitter: Triumph of emergent system design. Simple rules result in complex (and good) outcomes. Surfaces great stuff: content is pre-filtered by people I trust. Creates a whole new category since microblogging is not just "blogging but shorter". Twitter won because it hit the network effects tipping point first.
John Dodd- what do you think of Foucault in this sphere- he gets a lot of press for his read of Bentham's Panopticon.
All of these products so far bring together community. A good number of them actually track behavior- should we be concerned? One thought that I have been having is that the power of searching leaves us vulnerable to the fact that we are currently in a system where we
a) are trying to attract the guard of the Panopticon's attention
b) which leaves us vulnerable to the guy who isn't. he can look on behalf on the guard, underneath, at our vulnerabilities.
Is the loudness of all the information of the internet getting in the way that someone with enough power can use it for harm?
Should we develop products that also encourage segmentation to amplify as well take away certain powers of the "Guard in the tower?"
Or in other words- should we develop products and systems on the internet that afford privacy as well as community at the same time?
The reference to Bentham makes me wonder what you read.
There is your error...
Some more information: if I try to trick this program/plugin/application into sending me a password to the email address I am using:
div class="alert-message error">Sorry, we couldn't find anyone with that email address or username.</div
Essentially, it is logging comments, but it may or may not think I exist.
The only thing better: To turn this into a huge growth experience as I learn how to do this myself. Away from read/see/hear only to read/write/speak/see/draw.
I participate to learn.
I actually wrote up my take on it a while back when I first began writing online: http://www.dreamsnare.com/Purpose.html
a. Facebook and iPhone : the variety of applications available is incredible. Variety / choice is of course very attractive
b. With respect to the iPhone while the browser experience is interesting I actually just love the fact that I can bypass the browser experience by simply clicking on the application straight from the UI
real names make it easy to connect so it fit with your analysis.
Many bad talks about twitter are about fake accounts, cybernamesquating and identity spam. So in terms of social identity it's definitly a part of the equation.
Authenticity means no time wasted try to clear out stuff.
I like the three axes of Nigel
1. simplicity (ease of use)
2. your friends (i.e. context) -
3. cost of entry (not just money, but time).
And authenticity is part of the N°3 in terms of cost in time.
Facebook still gave people the ability to express themselves and connect with others while being upscale and easy to use.
1. simplicity (ease of use)
2. your friends (i.e. context) -
3. cost of entry (not just money, but time).
What makes Facebook more popular than MySpace in certain age groups. We all hang out in different places based on where are friends are and what they do and give us. The other interesting thought it what is the tenure of new technology - with the increased pace of change, we can all try things easily, set up a profile quickly and as quickly ditch it.
What makes Facebook interesting for example is its stickiness, ease of use and platform. We add feature, widgets etc - then photos, share them with our friends that are also on there and more.. Just my 2c.
This does not mean that the same product makes it through the whole sequence, on the contrary, it seems that a product appeals typically to one group, but it might take a product that appeals to two groups for it to bridge across and trigger adoption by the next group. The whole thing works by referral and I suspect that we are still learning about what information it is that is transferred across each transition.
Once the word is out that some new capability is potentially available, the viability for its adoption by each group depends not only on the validation of the objective by the previous group, and not even by the features (because in many cases each group expects fewer features than the previous group) but, I suspect, mostly by the removal of barriers to adoption which are more difficult to surmount for those who are more innovation-averse.
In other words, innovators will put up with a lot more pain to achieve the purpose than the early majority.
I think Lee Corning and Nathan Bowers are spot on. I think consumers have been adopting new technologies for the last 100 years and so the phenomenon is not new. The rate may be new.
The key driver is that the market is always made up of early adopters where it is truly a technology battle and by the time it gets to mainstream certain standards emerge which allow better capital allocation and hence acceleration of choice. The classic was the BETAMAX-VHS battle. While Sony on Betamax had the better technology, VHS won in the end. So technology alone is not a differentiator. For a product to enter mainstream, it must have established a set of standards, it must be seen as safe and reliable, and the cost-benefit proposition must make sense.
There were no early adopters that the iPhone relied on to sell it, it didn't need them. It sold as many as Apple could produce just from the presentation and online coverage EVEN at the inflated pricepoint! You don't need early adopters, hell you don't even need to be cheap! You just need a kick ass product that has a low barrier to entry, that's either useful to the consumer or incredibly fun to use or both and the market will take it from there.
you mean the last 100,000 years
when has there ever been an era where people aren't trying new technologies?
+1 VHS
2: Social Radar. "Knowing what everyone is upto without the effort of calling around" (FB, twitter). Also helps if their friends are already on it.
3: Accessibility. (hulu - access to nostalgic content)
The most important factor for consumer adoption is #1. It has to be easy.
* Note I only named those apps/devices, I am currently using.
A few random thoughts:
Consumer adoption of new stuff (not just technology) is driven by other people/people like "me"/people who "I" trust. Increasingly, advertising alone does not. Check the Yankelovich Monitor stats on who/what people trust, and you'll find people trust others like themselves much more than advertising.
I call that Integrating Advocacy into your product/brand and wrote a short paper on it:
http://www.i-boy.com/weblog/2007/07/integrating...
I wonder if the things you've listed above (whilst certainly rooted in technology) have more to do with more basic needs than "technology". Most of the examples you've listed deliver either engaging and entertaining experiences or enhanced/enabled communications. Or both. I think those two things (entertainment and communications) are intrinsically more interesting than technology and they drive adoption more than technology does alone.
I disagree with the idea that "you have to be the first to market with a version of the technology that is simple and easy to use." ... Google was far from first to market. The iPhone was certainly not first to market, not as a mobile phone, smart phone, touch screen or whatever.
What both Google and iPhone have done is provide a revolution (instead of an evolution) in their respective markets. Evolutionary companies (the me-too brands and such) can do ok with enough marketing and advertising, but it is the revolutionary creative and innovative brands that capture people's imagination and attention. And that drives adoption.
Good luck with the panel.
@iboy
- the 'POP' effect - the best way i can describe this is Shazam / iphone apps (most of them) - brilliant little novelty app - one you cant wait to show your friends, but no lasting value - repeat usage drops of a cliff.
- the 'perpetuity'effect - a combination of novelty / curiousity combined with lasting value. An example in my life would be the I-google platform - designed as a platform that delivers new, fertile, viral and actionable content to my screen every morning. Perpetuity effect is the enablement of an ecosystem of continuous value for the consumer.
If you are an app - you better be a killer app that i truly never realized i needed but now find i cant do without - i cant think of any of those.
Just my opinion mind.
Netbooks have taken off because they make life easier and increase the usefulness of time spent. People are always on the go and they always need access to information. Now couple that with a bigger screen but still small enough to be portable and you have a device that can entertain you on a flight and you're still able to carry it with you and pull it out in Starbucks and surf the web on something bigger than an iPhone. It's just small enough and just useful enough. They don't replace a computer, but that's not the design, it's designed to be your computer on the go and for that it's brilliant. It's both useful and easy to use because it's the same computer you're used to, you don't need to learn a new OS. It just works.
I think that it's still important to note that the Wii doesn't succeed ten years ago. The gaming market hadn't reached critical mass yet, so the idea of granny's playing video games probably wouldn't have taken off. But when you have a market that is searching for new consumers, they way the gaming market was after selling over a hundred million PS2's, the only way you can get new customers is to target them specifically.
The same with netbooks, ten years ago a netbook was a Palm PDA. It was cool for what it was worth but the mass expansion of internet and wireless access has made this device infinitely more useful. The fact that it also runs the same apps that you're accustomed to on your home PC also makes it that much easier to use. Sure you can't slide it into your pocket but the increased usefulness makes carrying it in a backpack or purse worth the slight inconvenience.
I'm rambling I think, but in summation, you really need a low barrier of entry and for it to be either useful or fun or both to succeed. Otherwise, what you end up with is 'cool' and 'cool' doesn't change the world on it's own.
Facebook - not myspace, clean easy design
Wii - cost, family, classic gaming
Hulu - Not joost, content
FlipCam - cost, ease, quality
Rock Band - evolution of dance revolution, evolution of air guitar
Mafia Wars - huh?
Blogger - dude, Blogger? why not wordpress, both would be blog or die trend, ease, pure play
Pandora - dead brain simple to listen to music you like without thinking
Twitter - kids hate, the elderly love it, has to do with our inability to concentrate, thank you
- It improves my personal efficiency at doing a given task
- It ultimately saves me money
- The level of engagement is an order of magnitude higher than the current options
If it can tick more than 1 of those boxes, it quickly becomes a must have. If you take previous real world examples as case studies:
Adoption of DVD:
The visual and sound quality was a huge jump up from what we'd all be accustomed to with VHS, but it wasn't the killer feature for me (and is why I've still not got a blueray device in my house). Being able to jump to a specific track like we'd become accustomed to with audio CD was amazing. Now you could jump directly to the scene you wanted to rewatch, no "fast-forward oops too far, rewind" dilemmas. The fact that I could reduce the amount of space required to store my movies by at least 2/3 would ultimately be saving me money too.
Skype:
Living on a different continent to the rest of my family, not only do I no longer need to call to see if their home, but I don't need to pay the often exorbitant international telco prices at per minute rates to keep in touch.
Facebook:
Continuing with the "keeping in touch" theme, there are a lot of friends and family that I have a genuine interest in their lives. Due to my own various commitments though there is so often something else that is a higher priority that lining up a schedule with an old friend for a quick catch up on what's new. Now knowing the minutia of someone's life can happen on my terms and not just let years fly by and making us lose contact.
Twitter:
Networking and other benefits aside, the main benefit twitter gives to me on a daily basis is that it is mostly a self filtering RSS feed. I the list of people I follow fairly tightly grouped around my areas of interest, as a result almost anything of particular interest to me gets tweeted about by somebody. I find it much quicker and easier to quickly glance my commentary in twitter a few times a day, presently my RSS reader has several thousand unread items that I feel like I'll never catch up on.
Just one man's opinion
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/09...
I think all technologies offer a new experience to the customer even the ones which are not successful in the market. I agree that many hit products today create engagement feeling (like Twitter), Fun and prestige (probably iPhone)or totally different with the mainstream (like Wii).
However there are other dimentions which come to picture as well. Take automobile as an example: One it was introduced in the market, it was very difficult to use it (compared to horse) but people went for the product as it offered better performance in certain attributes (e.g. speed).
In the case of the bag-less vacuum cleaner, it was the customer cost of using/process which acted as the driver...an so on. Hope this helps.
1. interactive. All of those applications allow the user to interact with the information or media in a whole new way.
2. Build upon the previous experience. Every time someone uses Facebook, or follows someone on Twitter, they build "barriers to switching" that increases the time required to switch to a competitive network, product, etc.
3. Understand the audience. The Wii doesn't have the best technology, but Nintendo understood that creating a unique way to participate was more important than graphics power. The iPhone was unique and got its audience to switch to an inferior network to use the device.
4. Invert the question and understand why certain new technologies weren't adopted. Why was $MSFT unable to challenge the ubiquity of Adobe's Acrobat? What impact does price point have? Is the community remaining true to the intent of has it become corrupted (craigslist v. eBay, myspace v. Facebook)?
That's my $0.02
A useful list might be those companies that did not break out and why! The dark side can often be more illuminating!
The overwhelming theme is "I want to do something but don't want to think". So the success is a combination of a product that fills a want with a very usable product and a tendency to err on minimalist features, at least in the beginning.
If you take this explanation, it maps extremely well against all of these breakout products.
However, we have to be careful with the word simple. I prefer "simple to use". For example, the iPhone is complex because it can do many things so I wouldn't say it is simple. But it delivers huge with little effort on the part of the user and it is therefore simple to use.
BTW, I'm a bit surprised YouTube didn't make the list.
Enjoy your panel.
@isfan
Hope you have a follow up after the panel with other thoughts.
I own an itouch. Despite all the apps I purchase I use it 99% for music.
I own Rock Band. We used it for a week and now one of my jackets covers the drums.
I own a netbook. Hardly ever use it though I am always on the go. (I did buy one for a gf who uses it all the time.)
We know that most twitter users are over it in a month just like blogging.
Massive consumer adoption is less about convincing me I should use your X but convincing the people I trust to use it. And, no, it's not the same thing.
So it can be interesting to look at why products are not adopted. For example, if the technology-push behind a product were based on the ability for consumers "to combine A with B while doing C", then Geoffrey Moore identifies a couple of areas which prevent adoption.
Firstly, the product might be found useful by people who want to do A and D. If the provider's response is "but this is not even doing B, let alone C!!", then they may fail to pursue that avenue. But if it works, then who cares?
In the 1970's, I was involved in technical research on video discs using a variety of technologies. When our group first heard of CDs (which applied the same technology to audio-only), we simply did not get it, we thought: "What? It doesn't even use the video capability"!
Secondly, there might be a myriad of wrinkles to be sorted out, they are technically easy for the provider but are problematic for the consumer. But the provider does not see the problem, because "anyone could solve that", but no one does!
Apple products are wonderful, but [putting my hard hat on] they fail in many ways to appeal to the early majority in most sectors because of this issue! They are getting it slowly: note MS Exchange support in OS X Snow Leopard announced yesterday.
Also, it is important for providers to roll with the market, their first product might useful but its greatest value might be in the bridge to their second.
Google started with search, Adwords came later.
Interesting that Jennifer Johnson mentioned "passionate users". Of course, Kathy Sierra (http://headrush.typepad.com/) understands a lot about this.
Enjoy the discussion. Can we follow it anywhere?
On YouTube: The killer app was "Lazy Sunday." That one video sparked consumers interest more than any other and felt like a total tipping point when it was blogged via the embeddable widget for the 294762873th time. YouTube created the necessary viral features (like the embeddable widget) to grease the rails and substantially increase the viral coefficient of a user... but it was illegal copyrighted content that was the accelerant which cause the massive explosion of user adoption, and Lazy Sunday epitomized this for me.
- Belonging (connectedness)
- Fun (creatively ticklish)
- Simpler (doing something better, easier, with more joy and less ugh).
- Emotionally engaging. (makes me feel good, human, part of the thing)
- Aesthetics (feels good in your hand, looks good on your shelf, wears well on your body)
The thing is - people want to be connected, participatory, and valued. Humans are drawn toward ideas and devices that facilitate those emotions.
On a separate note, our program used threaded discussions extensively for class debates (and graded participation). The comments on posts like this (and I could have written this on any number of your posts in the last few months) look more and more like our class threads, only now I think your comment threads are bigger :-)
The points made in this conversation are very astute. The participants on this blog are remarkable. You've created a nice little social network right here Fred. It underscores some of the points made earlier.
Context plays a very important role in all this. The topic of this post clearly attracted a lot of the comments here based on people's areas of interest, expertise, new ventures et al. If you look at some of the most successful social phenoms (e.g. facebook) they didn't start out being everything for everyone. And yet in so many ways that's where they are now.
Trust and a little bit of celebrity (yes you!) helped tremendously (we trust the 'value' of the conversations you get going).
When a system of activity has contradictions (ie some bits of it aren't working as well as it might) a new mediation system (tool or whatever) that "fixes" the contradiction can upset the apple cart and create a new system (a new stability or dynamic- you choose) that of course reinforces the value of the new mediation system - all else changes to accommodate the new mediation. The whole theory embraces community, regulatory systems and how we divide and spend our time too.
You can use the analysis on major changes like electric light or even subtle changes - there is a great paper in the literature that discusses how the means of getting into hotel bedrooms changes whole of social relationships and employment structure in hotels. (see www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/pages/chatanddwr/c... )
Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-computer Interaction, MIT Press (1996) edited by Bonnie Nardi (now at UC Irvine)
It helps if the product has a unique style that meshes well with what people expect. But I think it has to go beyond their expectations and impress them on a deeper level when it comes to technology. It should be simple to use, the less time users spend frustrated, the more likely they are to keep using it. If it's customizable to the user in some way, that's a big plus. Of course an almost addictive quality to the technology, based on producing some positive psychological feedback, is common to many successful/spreading technologies.
I could spend a lot of time with this one, best of luck Fred you got a tough question to answer.
I will not be an early adapter of iPhone since I don't need mobile web. I'm semi retired and don't travel much any more. My trips are short enough to wait till I get home to check email and web sites. While the market for iPhone is large, it's not universal. The same is true for each example on your list. Here is a target market - I need my address book, calendar, phone, and portable memory in a single package WITHOUT the extra $60 a month for web browsing. And I'd like the touch interface cause it's cool! Oh, yea, ad in simple sync with both windows and Mac.
Simple and useful are both important, no doubt. But it takes more than that to explain why Amazon or Google represent giant leaps forward. Hulu is successful because of the word "your;" Pandora because of "personalized." Basically, the same thing. Blogger is your own printing press. Ditto for Twitter...
For example, Kathy Sierra reports that a discriminator of "passionate users" is that they describe their experience in the first person.
Hence her (http://headrush.typepad.com/)
- old way: "Buy this because *we* kick ass"
- new way: "Buy this because we want *you* to kick ass!"
iphone: Underlying need is pride. It's cool to own an iphone. Why cool? Because of branding and new UI.
Handphones: Creation of new need in that communication is now mobile and real time (at least with people on your contact list).
Relevance
Innovation
Participation / Interactivity
Unique Content
Personalization
Simplicity
Any one of these can drive adoption (and differentiation); of course, the more the merrier. Enjoy the panel!
That said, the Xbox 360 comes awfully close (innovation in question, but if Natal materializes, then that question is answered). And one might argue the iPhone (with help from its apps).
But it wasn't recent enough of a launch to stay on the list
I specifically ask them to see the last part i.e. Youtube embed part. Was YouTube the 1st to launch with Flash with immediate playback? Maybe, maybe not. More importantly, sometimes its enough to be the easiest/simplest to use. But other times, it's not enough.
The service has to be useful/entertaining to be even in the game but without a unique adoption/distribution strategy (e.g. Twitter's API strategy), you may not be able to scale that much. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule :)
I'm learning something which is something I feel like I often do when I come to your blog.
I think 'learning something' is worth mentioning here. Technologies that allow people to continuously "learn" have a much better chance for wide adoption. The 'something' doesn't have to be a traditional academic pursuit...
think video games, where you are constantly learning how to be a better player
Social nets, where you connect with friends but also learn what they are doing
Pandora, where you learn more about the music and musicians that you like
Google, where you can learn...anything.
On Twitter I follow SEO types, and entrepreneurs, and VCs. Why? To learn.
:earning is one of the reasons I think Bing has a chance...Its good enough search but it has an interface and features that suggest it can help people learn shortcuts for getting things done on the Web.
Hope to read a follow-up after the panel discussion...
Here's a Gladwell post that may have inspired my comment:
http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_05_16_a_brain...
Maybe we humans have a visceral need for knowledge? Maybe that need causes us to choose technology winners in part for the way they engage our mind? In addition to the user interface, the utility, the social aspects, maybe part of the success can be attributed to how the products make us think?
RIM wasn't the first to market with email on a phone, but they were absolutely the ones who figured out the best way to do it in a hurry. I'd give them five stars under your 'simple and useful' category.
Friends, coworker and family use it or recommend it.
Endorsement by a celebrity, famous and respected tech individual or entrepreneur.
Positive coverage on blogs and social news sites such as Digg.
A big or reputable company such as Apple is behind it.
Hulu - TV on your schedule
iphone: The iPod paved the road ... and Apple released a sexy product without a huge flaw ...
Hulu: Perfect product, had the advantage of sponsorship/cooperation of NWS and NBC compared to rivals which had initially zero or 1 big production company sponsor
Won't last ...
Wii: I believe that the Wii's succes is shortlived, no competitive advantage, sony/MS will release better version of motion based gaming soon (I own a Wii)
Flip: I own one and love it but the company's success will be short lived ...
Twitter: This next year is important ...
A low end 3 chip (RGB) MiniDV camcorder from Panasonic,like the one I borrow to shoot with, runs about $4,000. It uses a Leica lens. It also has a flash port.
I remember when this kind of craziness was happening with DSLR cameras. You now can get a DSLR camera for under a $1,000. (I think I saw a body for $500 recently).
The Flip is proof of concept that you don't need a DV tape for a good shot. You do need a better body, and a better les (But you don't need a Leica). We already know from experience with DSLR that chip and body prices will come down.
I'm sitting this one out. Isn't worth my time. Rather wait two years for something that can do something a bit more heavyweight in a smaller body.
iPhone - "cool" factor is king, and if you have enough apps you can actually let it do the thinking for you.
Facebook - It's not the same draw as Myspace, which was more about how many friends one could have. This is more about keeping track of/in contact with people who maybe you don't want to call every week, but it's nice to know what they're up to.
Wii - Singlehandedly turned Mom's argument of "you should be out getting exercise" on its ear. Now gaming IS exersize. Plus it's a blast to do drunk.
Hulu - On demand, almost no commercials. For such an impatient generation as mine, we want it when we want it and we don't want to sit through a bunch of spots to see it.
FlipCam - Ease of use, comes with super-easy editing software so now we can all be on YouTube, and be there faster.
Rock Band - See Wii.
Mafia Wars - We hate telling our friends "no" for any reason ("You've denied a request from _______" is so painful to see!) so we accept it to keep from upsetting he or she who sent it to us.
Blogger - Again, ease of use and sharing your opinions with the world makes us feel important.
Pandora - Self-programmable (appeals to our on-demand nature) and zero commercials.
Twitter - Like Blogger, only even easier.
I don't know if that helps, but that's how I sees it. Good luck sir!
B. McMath
This is why I would tell all of you- go into a college dorm and ask what we do...you will get some interesting answers.
Though I can say, GoCrossCampus is more popular with a certain crowd....I keep turning down invites...
1) People only recommend a service/product that they love. People hate flaky services/products. (note: Twitter really took off after the fail whale became rare/extinct)
2) People will stop using a flaky service/product quickly - leaving a short window for recommendation.
3) A high quality service/product gives people the feeling at a fairly deep level that the vendor cares. People flock to this feeling.
Quality is a gate for product adoption.
But, there I learned that first of all you must GIVE value to your users. Make deals from which your user will profit. If you have pressure of taking peace of pie then you are on the wrong way ...
Ross Lovegroove, one of most genius mind, once said: You must give before you get!
Some of the above also have true network effects (Twitter, Facebook) -- the more people use them the more valuable they become -- which I don't think is necessary but when you have one, and can drive it that is very valuable and will accelerate growth. As long as the product meets the three things above of course.
We have found that if consumers or the general public feels comfortable with the IT firm and the IT firms assures customers they are there to help them, guide them, and the purpose of the IT firm is to show and teach them how to fish instead of handling them one (Technically speaking).
Consumers are more likely to listen, be receptive to what you have to say, and you gain their trust; because you make them feel that you (the IT firm) are on their side - instead of trying to make a buck and run.
2. Free
2. Good customer service (or no need of one, it's that simple)
3. Addictiveness, with low frustration level
4. Stability, combined with slow feature creep at the customers' demands
5. Keeping up with the Jones and "all my friends have it".
I don't know if you can argue that all the millions of try-mes who came to Twitter will yield a growing user base, I don't think Twitter is anything like AIM yet, many kids prefer AIM to Twitter still, they don't like being out in THAT huge a public of Twitter, and prefer known networks.
I never see anyone use Hulu -- if you don't watch TV, why use Hulu? And there is so much more interesting on with interactive social media, games, and virtual worlds, and more easily accessed movies, that TV seems obsolete.
I prefer Typepad to Blogger, and I can't think of any blogs I read using blogger, does this one? A lot of people use Wordpress.
I guess if I had to pick one thing I see much more of than the services on this list I would say "Blackberry".
I am not going to discuss about the nuances of tea with a friend in Syria over Twitter. First off, Political Reasons for both of us. Second reason, it is an involved conversation.
Same with friends in Germany. Hiking in Germany and about the nature of flowers isn't going to cut it.
Twitter has a surface problem to it. I have a love/hate relationship with it (I also feel a need for a secondary client...another problem that was already resolved for with AIM and friends),
I think twitter alone may be surface but twitter is the news feed for the web
Many of the people who came to this discussion got here from twitter
Facebook wants you to do it all there. Twitter, like google, sends you elsewhere
I am one of the few human beings I know who doesn't own a computer. (my processing needs are high compared to my money supply.) It is really freeing and has actually forced me to learn more about computers, as well as meet more people. If software can't be loaded from my one portable harddrive (named DRIVEOFDOOM), it isn't happening.
I am forced by school constraints to not install TweetDeck until I get back home. (They are afraid of people f***ing up millions of dollars worth of equipment, joys of an expensive private university environment. Adobe Air seems to want this to happen, so no TweetDeck.)
I respect the wishes because I am good friends with many members of their student staff.
Share economy- I don't do too many illegal things, my friends tell me how to use Bash terminal commands on school computers, They also get to complain about weird comp sci problems. I tell them that their monitors are not properly calibrated. They critique my scans of film or my gigantic copyright symbols.
I can wait on the technology for such simple joys. I rather hang around wonderful people instead.
(Let the record stand that I have been without a computer for one academic year now. If you cannot figure out how to write a paper or do calculations without a computer- that is odd.)
If by timing you are saying that the technology or price point hasn't caught up to the idea yet, then I would agree with you. But I wouldn't personally define that as a timing issue.
Great presentation on what I'm speaking to can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/mingyeow/discovery-is...
With the introduction of every successful product or service we're given the hope that that produce or service will simplify our lives. PDAs hold the promise of maintaining relationships while on the go. Social Networking applications give us the illusion of hanging out with our friends in the Mall (or town square, bar, etc.). MP3 devices transport our cinderblock & pine wood shelves of albums to our metaphorical home at our favorite coffee shop.
The buzzwords in Design is that "it's" so simple, so beautifully executed, so intuative.
I posted an essay a short while back [http://tiny.cc/sPKO3] where I referred to Tip O'Neil's famous line, "All politics is local". In that essay I was referring to how graphic designers should approach designing for the web.
In regard to your question, I'd suggest the same concept can be applied to what drives consumers adoption of new technology.
All consumers want technology that will bring them "home".
1)you have beautiful work. I would kill to have my BA work look like your work....
Hell I would work for free just to make sure I was learning how to work the way you work...damn.
2)You are on the mark on about less tech. or Less Obtrusive tech...
Most people don't realize that we act upon a mediated world. Good design will both hinder and help that action.
We want technology that shows us how the mediation works without driving us mad...to us, this is home.
It is why we can't replicate nature on screen no matter how hard we try. But we can replicate and extended the movements of our bodies and voices.
Any object that can succeed in extending the senses that belong to the self, literally extending man, will succeed on the market. But one that tried to bring the outside, in, will probably fail.
This is the power of objects like the GUIs and phones. They literally extend. Even the basic power of music. Our identity, our power of conception, of numbers, patterns, our ability to hear, is locked in it. Things that extend music tend to succeed gloriously, especially if they intuitively extend other parts of the body.
Google Calendar. It was totally cross-platform, and it had sharing features so that everyone could plan tgoether.
Now it is even more robust. It texts messages me where I am supposed to go if I make it do that....
For massive adoption it must:
solve a meaningful problem, or create a unique opportunity - for a very targeted audience. . . with an inherent ability to evolve for other audiences.
Do we need to be so general with our problem solving?
Sometimes I wonder if meaningful problems only occur to specific demographics. Is it ok to let the evolution to either:
a) never happen
or
b) happen really slowly
Mainly I wonder because it seems that some industries and thier problems, though very general in some ways, got themselves into complicated rabbit holes.
Solving those problems would provide general solutions to a lot of people, but, it might be easier, more cost effective, and you might make more money by not trying to be everything to everybody- but by only trying to be one thing to one group. Just to pull some groups out of the rabbit hole they walked into.
Just a thought.
I admire abstraction and the innovation it takes to get there. See if you can find Michael Fried's "Art and Objecthood." He declares work by artists like Donald Judd as work of spectacle. These works are heavily abstract, but the process of getting to such an abstraction is complicated. (It is one of the reasons I took Figure drawing), which is one of the reasons the critique Fried offers about idea of spectacle is both controversial, yet appealing. Minimalism, across a variety of subjects, including business, has a lot of appeal because it does locate itself as being broad. Methods that are more limited tend to have a slower traction time, and can and often do become more valuable over time.
Awareness of people, their needs, their sense of place in time, seems to drive innovation more so than anything I have heard of so far.
Finding which needs are say minimalist (or an everyone need) versus limited (what would only appeal to a VC or a real estate lawyer) for me, are two very different approaches about how to drive innovation, and where to place human needs.
It is about where to start the Identity conversation and how to help define it.
People adopt tings more out of the need to define themselves than out of need for features and functionality. That said-- the newer (or more novel) something is-- the simpler it needs to be. Apparent simplicity reduces the risk of neurological pain that comes with trying something that doesn't work.
Timing is everything. Wished I knew about your need sooner.
* personal value
* learning curve / ease of use
* environmental pressure (peers/social flow/marketing message)
* impact (personal/social/environmental/etc)
better late than never...
avc.com - A VC who responds to every comment
The consumer market is not the place to see adoption. The consumer market is a late market relative to technology adoption.
I would add one more: fundamentally disrupt the economic of an existing industry -- e.g. long distance phone calls over skype.
cheers,
Bill
From my standpoint particularly in web based technologies, its all about delivering meaning (whether its wisdom, information, a means to express oneself, connection with others, or fun/entertainment being sought at the moment by the user) in a consistent and memorable experience that is beautifully simple in form and distributive in nature. Simplicity ensures ease of use, trial and understanding. Consistency ensures predictability of value or utility. Memorable allows early adopters to promote the sharing of the experience with others. Distributive allows the experience to be easily accessed from multiple points to create more use opportunities and adoption. Of course, all of this typically needs to be surrounded by the right circumstances and execution. How one rises above the noise is an incredible but exciting challenge.
Fear of missed opportunity.
Fear of looking/feeling stupid if they can't talk about it or don't know about it.
Fear of not being in the club.
Fear of not being noticed.
Fear of not being a somebody.
Fear of not being there when something important happens.
Fear of being judged.
Fear is the number one motivator for all things, now everyone re-read this line 1,000 times until you get it.
People will do absolutely anything to mitigate these fears, they will have their bodies reconstructed, they will spend obscene amounts of cash on designer goods and technology, they will mindlessly join every social network that is talked about. The more stuff people have or subscribe to, the more afraid they are.
Of course they may not realize it and they may deny it but that's because they are afraid of being judged ;)
Look at how Open Source can create happy communities that boost the project without high marketing cost. People want to feel good and be part of a group.
Arno
A good song, says what needs to be said, says it within the context what has been said before , and says it at the right time. Consider that the themes of songs we love (or hate) really don't differ much from the songs we care nothing about (neutrality is worse than hatred for the creative). It is the timeliness, relevance, and craft of the expression of that theme that wins the day. And if a song further exhibits time*less*ness, ongoing resonance, and beauty it becomes a "classic".
This analogy neatly explains many phenomenon in popular technology: hits-based business structures, a belief in king/queen pickers, fadishness, increasing operational focus on marketing and promotion, etc. The business of new popular technology looks like the business of music and movies, because the creation of new popular technology looks like the creation of music and movies.
A few things follow from this analogy. Winning technologies like YouTube are not thematically novel (i.e. hundreds of competitors in the online video distribution space, which is ultimately thematically related to television), but rather emerge as the most timely, relevant, and well-crafted. Further, we cannot ignore the influence of resources - monetary, power, or otherwise - on the relevancy component of the function. Perhaps most importantly, it is way too early to know whether any of these recent technologies have graduated to "classic" status yet. Even Google, while of obvious business value, has yet to exhibit the cultural longevity of Abbey Road, or Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, or perhaps more to the point television or the telephone. The last two illustrate the final business problem for popular technology ...successes become categorical and thus commodity.
Finally, the answer to your question as it applies to your business, Fred, is the same as in other creative businesses: prolificacy, experimentation and inspiration comprise the measure of creative capacity. The business problem is that the creative process is orthogonal to the ex post facto hallmarks of creative success (even if you substitute or add your own to timeliness, relevance, and craft). Everybody knows why a creative *product* was a success, but we can only perceive the capacity of a creative *effort* to output a large number of products all of which try to be subtly novel and "come from the heart", one of which *might* be a hit.
Gotta love it, right?!
p.s. - hope the panel went well, but it looks like a remarkably rich conversation has been right here in the comments. thanks for spurring.
As I recall, several characteristics of any innovation contribute to its rate of adoption:
1) Relative advantage--is the innovation better than the idea it supercedes?
2) Comapatibility--is it consistent with existing values and needs?
3) Complexity--Is it easy to understand and use?
4) Trialability--Can it be experimented with n a limited basis before a commitment is made?
5) Observability--Are the benefits of the innovation easily visible to others?
Generally, the more emphatically you can answer yes to the above questions, the greater the rate of adoption. I believe these basic principles still hold true today.
1) Ego (means: address me or let me express something about me)
2) Win (means: let me accomplish some reachable goal relatively quickly)
3) Sex (means: tickle my fantasies)
(tip to oliver hölle for this formulation)
Twitter: How cool is it to see your username and all your tweets? better when someone else refers to your tweets.
Wii: Lets us imagine we are that awesome tennis player or golfer we always wanted to be
Pandora: Music just for ME...because I am 'special' - same goes for Hulu, TV just for ME
Facebook: My friends can see all my photos, what I've been up to..and I can expand my friend circle
Rockband: we can be a star
So, takeaway for me is make the consumer feel special...like a star, and you'll win them over
Facebook - a way to keep in touch, easily, instantly
Wii - you are the joystick, it's like the version 0.001 of the holodeck
Hulu - watch tv shows, clips anywhere, anytime, right now
FlipCam - it's so easy to use you can forget that it's in your pocket :)
Rock Band - who hasn't fantasized about being *in* a rock band. Headbangers delight!
Mafia Wars - like Fb, it's easy, instant and played asynchronously
Blogger - easier than Word
Pandora - your radio station without the work of picking all of the songs
Twitter - merges and personalizes what, where and why instantly in 140 characters or less
Of the non-consumer electronics products you listed (i.e. web services), not one of them charge. At best Pandora operates under a freemium model, yet it still offers a compelling service for free.
If you focus on consumer electronics, I'd argue that only Rock Band is priced in the premium category. The iPhone was but has fallen to I wouldn't consider $200 (now $99) to be premium in the smart phone market. And the Wii falls well below its console competition.
Think of all the great follow-on acts that have created stickiness with users:
o Google: Search -> Gmail -> Docs -> Android
o iPod -> iPhone -> App Store
o Twitter: Microblogging -> 3rd party tools, “new” RSS ->new tools like twitpay
o Wii: games -> fun fitness
Part of the key to is the need to keep growing with your user base. This becomes particularly difficult when the user base itself is changing from early adopters to followers. Not only because scaling is tough, but because a different class of user often has different wants / needs / expectations.
ועכשו, אני רוצה ללמוד איזה סודים אני צריכה להצליח בחיים.
זה אחת מן סודים שלי.
critique the grammar later. I'm way out of practice. I need to find a way to catch up on tv over the summer to get back into practice, and be less shy about doing something like this.
A secret for a secret
;)
I went around in circles when I let this question churn in my head -thoughts appeared:
- it's a wrong question - consumers don't adopt technologies - I don't know what they do adopt... but it isn't technology
- technologists (and stakeholders) care about technology - most consumers don't - for them technology is like magic - and how wonderful is that?
- in what context is the question raised - is it about making money? is it about doing people a service? is it about improving life?
- surely this question has no single relevant answer - if consumers are teenagers then maybe "slick & sexy", if busy business people then maybe "useful & simple"...
- are we talking about consumers or people? consumers smells to me like a capitalist concept... is there an undertone there, or is it just my imagination?
Then when the dust settled, ideas surrendered and judgments suspended - there was silence... and Care appeared!
People love care. It is care that people consume - and it is care that is offered to consumers. Care comes in many flavors - it can be offered truthfully and it can be offered manipulatively - but it is still care!
Relevancy of a product is achieved by caring about it's intended users. Having someone in mind is a key to caring - otherwise you are just jerking around with ideas in your head (a trap technologists & technologies often fall into).
A good product - simple, great UI, performance - is achieved by care on the part of the people who partake in creating it, and that happens when management cares about them!
A sense of caring can be carried through in every aspect of a product's interface with "consumers": packaging, user experience, support, socializing, etc.
People are drawn to caring. I consider myself to be of a western state-of-mind - and I feel that care is one of the shortcoming of western society - it is direly missing. I wonder if consumption is a quality that has grown from this and it's resolution by other social forces (such as industrialization?!)
As I write these words I wonder if people who have care in their lives are less likely to be "consumers"?
Does this make sense to you?
Thanks
As a side note,
- this has over 250 comments, is that average, low, high for one of your questions?
- how was the panel?
Disqus for the win
with hulu, the interface is so-so. hulu's success is due to the fact that they hit a critical mass of content in one location. their interface good, not great (there is no "play your queue" button, for example so after you queue up a few shows, there's no "go" button). their success is 95% attributable to their CEO. he knows how to close deals and he closed enough of them to reach a tipping point of content. that's a one-man company as i see it (maybe not any longer but that guy is a pro at executing. how do you get someone at all those networks to return your calls?)
on this since this has been a *very* thought provoking thread to me.
Thank you for posting this entry and all the comments.
In my opinion, what you should be focused on may and should
vary depending on where your product is in its lifecycle.
And the thoughts you should put into and what course of actions you
should take also differ accordingly.
That's just another reason why it seems so difficult to come up with
one answer that satisfy this simple yet very very deep question.
I'm dividing the product lifecyle into 7 different phases.
I want to think what the right approach of marketing strategy and
tactics for the product is for each phase when I'm releasing my
product.
1. Pre-launch of the product
2. At the launch of the product
3. Soon after the launch of the product
Standing out to the eyes of Innovators
4. After getting Innovators approval
Refining the product to appeal to Early Adoptors
satisfying the requests from Innovators at the same time
5. Early mass marketing phase
Going into the general public to attract Early Majority
6. Crossing the Chasm
Expanding into Late Majority
7. What to do after becoming the #1 in the market
Dragging Laggers in to get them involved (if you care to)
Thanks!
I am prompted to think along these lines because I am just now finally getting into the work of Jakob Nielsen: http://www.useit.com/
I like the fact that you see the product and the experience as two different things/sides of the coin. Sure there are social networks, but none allows you to run your life the way Facebook does. That's why we don't just design products and web pages anymore, but we think in term of designing experiences.
But then again, the question becomes, is it more about optimizing an existing experience or about creating something entirely new, that sparks consumer's interest?
There is an interesting video from Rob Bryanton, its called "imagining the 10th dimension" and it's about understanding time and space (there is a very cool video that you can find on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjsgoXvnStY)
One of the things from that video that I found very interesting is that "a higher (N+1) dimension allows someone to transport from one place to another in the existing (n) dimensional space."
So when it comes to innovation, instead of trying to find the white space in an existing n-dimensional market, we can redefine it. Add another dimension...
It's a looong post, and after much discussion of this and that (including Kathy Sierra, and Michel Foucault's take on Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon), I propose (at the end of my long long post) one version of completing the phrase, "Fred Wilson Is:"... Hope you don't mind - I really do get a lot out of your blog! ;-)
I left a comment on your post
I wonder if you would build a larger and more loyal audience if you could figure out how to write shorther and more frequent posts?
I know I'm handicapping myself by not writing shorter posts because I know many online readers (of blogs etc.) really will not bother with anything over one or two paragraphs. "Shorter and more frequent" could mean delivering my "war & peace" length opus over several shorter installments instead, sort of like a series. That could work - something to think about/ act on.
Then again, not every post on avc generates well over 300 interesting and thoughtful comments that range so widely into so many areas. I really needed to stitch (or scramble?) some of that together...! ;-)
I do that a lot
Are you familiar with the term "bricolage" (in Levi-Strauss' academic-structuralist sense)? The Bookman (blog) describes it as a "willingness to make do with whatever is at hand... The ostensible purpose of this activity is to make sense of the world in a non-scientific, non-abstract mode of knowledge by designing analogies between the social formation and the order of nature. As such, the term embraces any number of things, from what was once called anti-art to the punk movement’s reinvention of utlitarian objects as fashion vocabulary..."
http://thebookman.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/post...
I'm way too scientifically-minded to appreciate bricolage as any kind of ideal, and I'm definitely not saying that either one of us is a bricoleur, or that I want to be one and do bricolage (although it sometimes feels like that's what I'm doing). But even when you're just "thinking out loud," I do think that your expertise lets you record your "rarely ...completely baked thoughts" like ingredients in a recipe. And your readers know that they often enough add up to a movable feast: they cook your stuff in the comments board - to use a typically bricolage-y analogy.
On the other side of the coin, there's the rock star blogger, someone so star-like s/he can blog about underwear and people read it. (In fact, people would probably read it *because* it's about underwear...) I'd rather chew off my own leg than fill those boots, though. The pressure would kill me. ;-)
-B