Navigating the fitness landscape of Chasm 2.0

Was reading Leigh Himel's post on the Chasm (that Web 1.0 theory du jour) - see diagram below - and noted 2 points made there with interest:



(The Chasm is that gap between what satisfies early adopters and the mass market. As wikipedia notes, early adopters are technology enthusiasts looking for a radical shift, where the early majority want a "productivity improvement". The latter group want a whole product, where the early adopter group only needs the core product, and has the technical competence, and financial resources to make the rest themselves.)

Anyway, Leigh noted that:

Has the definition of an early adopter changed? "Early adopters" are classically considered those who are willing to try virtually any new technology versus the "mainstream customers" that are much bigger in number but more cautious in adopting new technologies. But in that generation that grew up with the network and doesn't even 'SEE' technology per say (the notion that technology has become biology), is this great divide still relevant?

And this reminded me of a curve Seth Godin drew yesterday.



Now I must admit, when I first saw it I thought hmm - yet another Web 1.0 vintage wine re-bottled as a Web 2.0 insight with nice rounded edges etc However, maybe there is something more to this - Godin notes that:

That bell curve to the left represents acceptance by the focused/excited/tastemaking community. Those are the people who love microbeers and haute couture and Civil War memorabilia. Like all market curves, there's a sweet spot. Go too nutsy on us ($90,000 turntables, for example) and even the committed will flee. Go too pop, though, and we'll avoid you as well....

...The bell curve on the right, you'll notice, is bigger. This is a second market, a bigger market, the market of pop. These are the folks who go to the Olive Garden for a nice italian meal instead of the authentic place down the street. They too want something that's not too edgy and not too (in their opinion) trite.

So far, so Web 1.0 / Chasm 2.0, but with a twist - its not have beer / no beer, its microbrew vs grocklebrau. This is a more interesting and subtle point than the Chasm per se:

The reason you need to care is that gap in the middle. Every day, millions of businesses get stuck in that gap. They either move to the right in search of the masses or move to the left in search of authenticity, but they compromise. And they get stuck with neither.

i.e. the concept is perhaps more like fitness landscapes in darwinian evolution than an automatic progression from early adopters to grockles. Maybe this is what Leigh is implying - the concept of early adopter has changed, the 'net is ubiquitous in the OECD (well for 2/3 of the population with money anyway) so its more about choice of which hill to fly your flag, and the resultant potentially sub-optimal evolution experienced (see below).



Then to Leigh's second point:

And that leaves me wondering one important and looming question. When it comes to technology, have we crossed the chasm? And if so does that mean the entire model of influence needs to be rethought?

(That link takes you to the Duncan Watts / Malcolm Gladwell debate on how many influencers do you need to tip a point - see our take here)

Anyway, the thought I took away from all this was the following:

(i) We have crossed the chasm with the base networking technology - broadband IP, the Web, and e-commerce
(ii) The debate is no longer about "WEb 2.0" early adopters per se, but what bits of it people actually want to adopt (to Twitter is divine but to Skype is far more human) - ie what makes them passionate - is more about replacing the existing "Good Enoughs" - allowing people to see a better fitness landscape for something they largely do already.
(iii) Its probably a "layers" thing - once this Web 2.0 "social media" layer is bolted down, with the winners in place in the infrastructure, we move on to the next layer - and thats probably where real "early adopter" plays are looking at Chasms right now.