Early Adopters are the pillars...

In 1991 Geoffrey A. Moore wrote the book, "Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers". According to Tom Byers, Faculty Director of Stanford Technology Ventures Program, the book is "still the bible for entrepreneurial marketing" (2006). Here is a link to nice article by Alex Iskold on Rethinking the book and an extract from the article:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rethinking_crossing_the_chasm.php

Crossing the chasm is all about getting a technology widely adopted. The most difficult step is to win over the so called early majority of the mass market. This can only happen with the help of early adopters, who are instrumental since they are used as both examples and evangelists.

The problem is that compared to a few years ago, the speed with which new technologies are coming to the market has increased dramatically. All these technologies are aimed at the early adopters. And they love it and they try it. But the question is what happens when your early adopters run off to play with a new great thing before you have a chance to take your technology mainstream?

For example, some people who used to blog regularly, blog less now because they discovered Twittering (microblogging). Or, early adopters who have discovered Second Life might not have as much time to spend on MySpace anymore. These are not even necessarily competitive technologies, they are complimentary, but the fact is that they all compete for peoples' time and attention.

Since today's new technologies are being brought into the market at an unprecedented pace, the early adopters are stretched. They love trying new things and there are so many of them that they can't keep up and adopt as many new applications and services. It might just be the case that a good technology does not make it because the early adopters abandon it to try something new.

The early adopters are the pillars needed to cross the chasm; without them the whole scheme falls apart. You can't make a leap and bring on board the masses if the very foundation you are standing on, the early adopters, leave to do other things...