Dare Obasanjo gives a great example of the difference between the classic "early adopters" and the general market - and notes that many, many things that are crucial to a small set of people are of no interest to the vast majority:

I've lost track of all of the this is the year RSS goes mainstream articles I've read over the past few years. Although RSS has turned out to be a key technology which powers a number of interesting functionality behind the scenes (e.g. podcasting) actually subscribing and reading news feeds in an RSS reader has not become a mainstream activity of Web users. When you think about it, it is kind of obvious. The problem an RSS reader solves is "I read so many blogs and news sites on daily basis, I need a tool to help me keep them all straight". How many people who aren't enthusiastic early adopters (i) have this problem and (ii) think they need a tool to deal with it?

That's very true, and ought to be more obvious. It's true of a lot of other things as well, including things completely outside the technology realm). I'm glad to see Dare posting again - while I don't always agree with him, he adds a lot of common sense to an awful lot of topics.

Technorati Tags: PR, common sense