I've been out of the loop long enough to see the Technorati jump from Twitter to Jaiku to Pownce and now apparently to BouGie.
Kudos to Armano for touching on the same concern I've had about this new manic environment we're living in.
On one hand, I feel anywhere on the continuum of prude to laggard. On the other hand, I feel somewhat disingenuous to even knock the spirit of innovation and pace of chance. After all, this is the new order of society. The only constant is change. There is no ONE BIG THING, but rather a MILLION LITTLE THINGS.
Don't get me wrong. I don't have a problem with this rapid pace of new product introductions. I think what is irking me is a combination of 2 factors:
- The $$$ signs in everyone's eyes. After all, all one needs to do is introduce a semi-cool new application without much of a strategic reason-to-believe, slap on a web 2.0 logo, get Robert Scoble to bless it and then sell out to Google 12 days later. Right?
- The seeding approach (I've got 5 free passes to the Beta of Fickl. Who's interested?) which has transformed the flock of sheep into a swarm of frenzied bees (or locusts). The end result is the same.
In both cases, the connective tissue is the ability to tap into and harness the potential of the influencers. I guess my constructive advice here is that you'll need as powerful (if not more) ability to sustain the fleeting interest and use this opportunity to ramp up the adoption from geeky innovator through to early and late majorities in order to really be successful.
The 5 free passes approach is a great best practice, but by itself is rather superficial and exceptionally fleeting.
