Evan Williams on Developing for Early Adopters, and the U.A.E.

An interview with Evan Williams about Odeo closes on this note:

I think it’s really tricky knowing what you could be forever reacting to every whim. The especially tricky thing is that some of the more vocal members of the community are leaders and have big needs, but they turn out to be edge cases. I see a lot of companies, web companies, 2.0 sort of companies that attract early adopters. and they listen to them and get feedback from them. But then they kind of get sucked into pleasing these early adopters, and the early adopter is really on the next curve. And that becomes a conflict when you’re trying to reach a much more mainstream audience.

This is going to be a huge issue facing Web 2.0 companies in the next five years. When you think about this challenge it makes the accomplishments of Flickr and Typepad all the more amazing - since they are developing for the average user but selling themselves to the early adopters simultaneously.

But you can't avoid controversy, look at the current debate over nudity on flickr, seemingly enflamed by muslims from the UAE. I have to admit I have made several residents of the UAE my "contacts," so I can look at their Unicode-driven usernames and the crazy pictures of Starbucks they take with their Nikon D70s. Sure, that's a little weird, but it was a ton of fun. I hope they come back.