A minor nit to pick with the post though. You make the early adopter process seem very negative. Essentially, the reasoning being the early adopter gets "tired" of the site or its users. I can understand the decreasing excitement as you start using something more and it goes more mainstream, but part of that is due to the site not "needing" the early adopter as much. - Rob Diana

Love the writing, love the wit. An excellent post! - Stephen Foskett

I guess all early adopters are closet egomaniacs? - Ro (Lilyhill)

Agree on all - Guy Vander Heyden

@ Rob Diana- The question is wether this really is a negative process or not? Its negative because the service in question might be brilliant in and of itself but still be left in the dust by the early adopter. The point should be that early adopters are focused not on the staying power of the service but on its geekiness. Those that follow join not because of its geek cred, but because they find it useful based on said reviews by the early adopted crowd. - Roberto Bonini

In my mind, it's not intended to be a negative process. But you can see the word FriendFeed throughout the post without having to say it, right? I often read here that XX% of all content on FriendFeed is about FriendFeed. So if you look at these five stages, you can see stages 2 and 3 for sure. Do I feel the need to announce FriendFeed Rooms or Personalization or Search? No. People already know I'm here. But others (Rubel, Loic, Thomas Hawk, Hutch, Jeremiah, Scoble) are still banging the drum. - Louis Gray

I hope this doesn't mean that you're moving on to stages 4 or 5 Louis... - Paul Buchheit

I don't think this is a negative post. But it is certainly accurate. - Francine Hardaway from twhirl

@Paul, I'm not planning on it. Given that this was a broader piece, you can see others who exhibit the behavior seen in 3 and 4, making "demands" more than requests, or trying to make FriendFeed something it's not. I've found FriendFeed to be a great addition to my information workflow, and the site's been good to me too. What I also should have mentioned is that some sites have the potential to be a permanent 3. That challenge is yours for the taking. - Louis Gray

We're doing our best to be a permanent 3 :) - Paul Buchheit

dude. This is fantastic. We are often thinking through the progress of the user base and shifts that occur as we (and they age). Brad Feld has a great post called: http://www.feld.com/blog.... I think yours a great compliment to this concept. - Micah Baldwin

I think the 5 stages of Death applies here as well. example (where X is some new service, gadget, etc.) 1) DENIAL: "I don't next X. X is lame. X still has issues." 2) ANGER: "What do you mean 'it's a closed beta?' How come so-and-so got one?" 3) BARGAINING: "Someone please send me an X invite/beta/demo unit!" 4) DEPRESSION: "Is that all there is? Shouldn't there be more to life than this?" 5) ACCEPTANCE: "I occasionally use X, but not every day. Meh." - Karim

these stages are absolutely positive - Marco(aureliusmaximus)

Don't forget "Recovery" - TranceMist

Who is Louis Gray? - Charlie Anzman

Louis Gray is King Midas. He touches you and you turn to gold. - Amit Patel