"All my efforts to make a service that would make photo sharing quick, easy and scalable to years of photos for normal people failed to attract normal people. Here's where I went wrong: Normal people are late adopters. Late adopters won't use OurDoings because it's easier, faster, more aesthetic, better organized, and more effective for chronicling doings than any of the alternatives. They will use it because early-adopter friends recommend it. This is actually the right strategy for them. I built a service for busy people. Consequently, they are too busy to investigate as to whether it's really as good as it appears to be. They rely on their early-adopter friends to spend the time and to recommend something good. Late adopters also know that if they go with their friend's recommendation, they'll have someone to ask questions of later." - Paul Buchheit from Bookmarklet

This is an important point that not everyone seems to understand. Your early users will, almost by definition, be early adopters. - Paul Buchheit

I'm glad FriendFeed understood how to work with early adopters. It's been fun to watch this site grow and help push the participation. - Louis Gray

@Louis, contrary to popular opinion, I think FriendFeed also understands what late adopters need. It doesn't have to be an adjunct to twitter. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Bruce: FriendFeed still has a lot of work to do on that front. When I show it to late adopters I get a ton of pushback. Why? Because it doesn't have the features they want, yet. For instance, how can you pull out just the items that have comments from the everyone tab? You can't. That's a frequently asked for question. Also, how can you make the fonts bigger? You can't (not without Firefox and Grease Monkey, two things that late adopters have no clue about). That's a frequent complaint. Etc. Etc. - Robert Scoble

Sounds interesting...I'll definitely join once I get a digital camera of my own! - deusdiabolus

perhaps it has something to do with the charging system? or that it really wont show any of my photos? - Rich

I agree ff has a lot of work to do on that front, but as far as choosing an idea that can benefit lots of people, they're spot on. Most of the things my extended family does by email could be done better on ff. I often find myself looking for a "Like" button in gmail, for example. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Rich, I think I know what you're saying about a charging system, but it's free. I'll make that part of the interface clearer soon. Want to email me the pictures that won't show? ourdoings@ourdoings.com There are thousands of photos from various cameras and cell phones on OurDoings, so I'm surprised about the trouble. - Bruce Lewis from fftogo

Rich, here's more info about the bug I fixed last night: http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-... - Bruce Lewis