The tip off for this story actually came from my wife when she mentioned that Mallika Sehrawat visited the Twitter office in San Francisco. That had me searching Google and chanced across the above video where she is seen dancing with Twitter employees. And as this report indicates, this looks like a staged event wherein Mallika arrived at the Twitter office in a “stretch limousine, with fans and media channels waiting outside for her.” This must be good for Twitter and great for Mallika! While this “event” was probably arranged by the actresses’s publicists or managers, it is not entirely insignificant. For this is a healthy sign that Twitter is reaching critical mass and has managed to break beyond the early tech adopter crowds. When you start being used by movie stars in a developing country (and a far less tech oriented society in general), it’s an indicator that you appeal is broadbased enough to go beyond technology crazed initial users. This is a positive development for Web 2.0 in general. Amongst the plethora of Web 2.0 services that abound, very few have actually manged to scale this barrier.
As Geoffry Moore’s Technology Adoption Life cycle indicates, technological innovations need to make a jump from the early tech adopters to the phase called the early majority. And if that jump is successful, the innovation is likely to attain critical mass (the area under the curve indicates the no of users… and the area under early majority is far bigger than that under early adopters). Mallika Sehrawat (representing Bollywood in general) is a symbol of the early majority as movies are mainstream entertainment. For Mallika, her Twitter usage conveys a “I’m tech savvy and abreast of the latest” message to her core audience. For Twitter, this is significant because someone like Mallika considers Twitter an important enough channel to use in reaching out to her followers.
Amongst the popular Web 2.0 (popular amongst the early tech adopters, I mean) services, I think there are just three (yet!) that have managed to crash this barrier – Youtube, LinkedIn & now probably Twitter. Youtube is almost becoming like a cultural thing now – last weekend I happened to visit a fairly nondescript, beaten down cybercafe near my house in Delhi and out of the ten surfers in the cybercafe while I was there, four of them were watching Youtube videos! And none of those guys looked computer buffs/nerds to me. LinkedIn too is being used far beyond the initial adopters.
My SlideShare experience: With SlideShare, we try to keep track of the user segments that are using the service. The bulk of our users are businesses, corporates, tech folks, educators etc. Lots of others use slideshare as well but let me mention some of the curious ones in that list – gardeners, real estate agents, religious preachers and missionaries… some of these users are clearly beyond the early tech adopters as well. One small victory for SlideShare happened recently when the White House started using SlideShare (though I would still consider them an early adopter).
Generated by BlogIt
BlogIt - Auto Blogging Software for YOU!
No comments:
Post a Comment