Do you hear what I hear?
I caught this very informative (not surprising, but still eye-opening) article from ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez on the New York Times’ Technology section yesterday and it’s had me thinking…
I know it’s been said before, but now may be a time to remind ourselves (‘us’ being the nerdy types who get all excited about a new ‘it’ technology every few weeks) that WE are not the norm. When your read so many content sources related to marketing and ‘new’ media, sometimes it’s hard to remember that the average American really has no clue what we’re talking about most of the time.
In Sarah’s article, she draws on research from Forrester that shows that only 4% of their research set had ever used a location-based service like 4Square, Gowalla, Loopt, BrightKite, etc. That’s 4% for ANY of these services combined.
I know it’s still important for brands that have an image of being ‘on trend’ and among the early adopter set to participate in the next ‘big thing’ pretty early on – for the rest of our brands, however, we can probably take our time. I hope that helps take the pressure off some others of you – it certainly reminded me to breathe a sigh and let go of some of the pressure to convince others to ‘keep up with the times’.
Tags: average adult, average American, early adopters, echo chamber, location based social media, social media
