Comments on: Well, at least it’s better than ShitCrunch

By: Basic marketing

Basic marketing — Tue, 16 May 2006 13:50:16 +0000

Issue is simple. Are the 53651 users early adopters to a mass market or are they unique amongst themselves, have no relation to the needs of the mass market, and should be considered a market in of themselves. Josh Kopelman feels the latter, his critics feel the former. Choose your side, argue with facts…facts usually determine the right answer.

By: SiliconBeat

SiliconBeat — Tue, 16 May 2006 13:29:58 +0000

The 53,651 Meme — and the Silicon Valley geek echo chamber…

Brother LoveThe “53651 meme” took flight this past weekend, fueled by a post from Josh Kopelman. Kopelman, the East Coast angel investor (who we recently mentioned here) says Silicon Valley Web 2.0 startups have fallen into a trap of appealing to a n…

By: Eric Willis

Eric Willis — Sun, 14 May 2006 18:41:43 +0000

The reality of the situation is this: If you can´t get the audience of 53,651 to be excited about your project..If you can win some of this audience and gain a critical mass there, I have a hard time thinking(with most startups)you will actually get to mass market critical mass.

A startup needs to create a beachhead with the prime target: tech savy, beta-hungry users who are willing to try new technology and deal with and accept all the bugs that comes with being a beta software release. These are the connectors who will often rave about a new product or service to everyone they know. They create the viral effect. Google, for instance, was once an engine that only the first tier tech savy user knew even existed. It then spread like a virus to become a mass market success. The reality is that a product, service,etc has usually moved through several tiers of users before attempting to cross the mass market chasm. However, I am willing to bet if you can´t get the early adopter market, you will have a hard time making it. Releases don´t often jump across tiers of users.

This is not to say that you “niche” produce a project for tech savy users. Often if you can satisfy their needs, you will have the functionality and feature set to satisfy a much broader set of users. However, you must begin with the users who are most willing to use a new product…and this is the “audience of 53,651″

I don´t find it ironic that many of the negative posts like that are made anonymously.

By: Simran

Simran — Sun, 14 May 2006 18:16:03 +0000

Too many companies are targeting an audience of 53,651. That’s how many people subscribe to Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch blog feed. I’m a big fan of Techcrunch – and read it every day. However, the Techcrunch audience is NOT a mainstream America audience.

Let’s set aside America for a moment. I know of at least a few hundred subscribers from India and Israel. I’m not too sure how many of those subscribers are actually American, let alone mainstream American.