Wednesday, May 07, 2008

The New Digital Divide

Shafqat over at Newscred, a digital newspaper which is currently in private alpha, wrote a good post titled "The New Digital Divide - Building Web Services for the Mainstream". His point is that the chasm between early adopters on the one hand and mainstream users on the other hand is getting larger:
The mainstream don’t even use or understand RSS, but us techies have moved on to Twitter and FriendFeed.

Very true. While it's great to see all those new Web 2.0 ideas, innovations and technologies coming up every day, we (the Web 2.0 community) also have to avoid creating lots of products which no one else except ourselves is going to use any time soon.

If your startup's plan is to acquire millions of customers over the next few years (which is likely if you want to make money by selling ads), do a reality check and explain your idea to some "real" people among your friends and family.

Also read Josh Kopelman's great article about the same topic.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Christoph - thanks for the mention. Your last point is something I really believe in. We want to build a product for the masses, so rather than get too focused on Twitter and TechCrunch, I've spent a lot of time with friends and families. Sometimes its difficult and there are concepts that they just don't get, but that just reinforces the notion of this chasm.

The one company that I think has successfully closed the gap? Facebook of course.

john said...

Good post, social media, bolgging, RSS, etc… are widely using in print publishing industry to circulate the e-editions. These new technology mediums become the revenue generation tools for the publishers. There are some companies like Pressmart Media which is helping the print publishers in distribute over these mediums.

Anonymous said...

Great article.
I have some ideas. So tell me how to share it? :)