Disqus - Latest Comments for assaf

Re: Promising Services

assaf — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 14:07:07 -0000

I think it's incredibly exciting. What we're seeing here is a lot of work to break down barriers, make it easy for people to participate, and form their own online identity.
It's bigger than just one service, and it's going to make a change on the way we participate online. 2006 will be a great year.

Re: They will not come

assaf — Wed, 10 May 2006 22:26:06 -0000

â€ [user will not come] because they donâ€™t want to generate content, they want better lifeâ€

I got that one from Scott Heifermanâ€™s blog. He lists 50 of them, I picked the 10 that resonate the most (this one was no. 1).

I read it again just now and noticed that I got the link to Scott Heifermanâ€™s blog from Seth Godin's blog.

Full circle.

Re: Where are the masses?

assaf — Fri, 12 May 2006 02:52:34 -0000

Every service that optimizes the online experience limits itself to that segment of the population that wants to experience more, but just doesn't have the time. That's not a problem that most people have.

Those who will fail are not the ones that have a small portion of the entire population, but the ones that can't sustain on a small user base. If your RSS feed tagging and microformating service needs the MySpace user base to be profitable, you're in for an unpleasent surprise.

Re: Where are the masses?

assaf — Fri, 12 May 2006 12:41:47 -0000

I agree most won't make it past early adopters. In fact, most will get the TechCrunch spike, but even the early crowd doesn't stick around. Too much cool stuff, not enough time in the day.

My approach is to judge companies by one metric: can you make a killing from the early adopter crowd? If the answer is yes, you have a head start to go bigger.

If the answer is no, you run out of money before you can figure out how to cross the chasm.

Re: Where are the masses?

assaf — Fri, 12 May 2006 15:16:48 -0000

Definitely agree with that.

I've been wondering a lot about what "real life" problem means. Most of the people I talk to think it's photo sharing. I tried several sites, and I think Flickr is better for some people, worse for others. Besides, I don't think photo sharing is a real life problem begging to be solved.

Then there's attention. How do I get people to pay attention to what's going in my life? Or to pay attention to my works? Evey social interaction I have is defined by that. That's a real life problem in my book. And that's a problem Flickr solves brilliantly.

As a business that rocks. The people who value that attention are definitely willing to pay for a better service. The people who value that attention are also good at building buzz.

Re: Where are the masses?

assaf — Wed, 17 May 2006 19:01:02 -0000

I call these "build for fun" sites. Some of them have amazing ROIs. They'll never grow big enough to buy Google, but you get more than you invested.