Two types of users - Why your startup should pay attention

Fluffy and superficial.

Much analysis has been done in customer development, e.g. The Four Steps to Epiphany & Crossing the Chasm, it's a great loss if those works are not studied in details and built upon.

Someone made a relevant comment on the post about the need to further segment power users into early adopters and lead users. This resonates with my own experience.

With no disrespect intended, the early adopters in many markets are a little like heroin junkies willing to try anything new for 5 minutes. This may look great from a user registration perspective but, in general, these people have very little interest in buying into your long term vision.

Coming from a B2B background, I'm still working out the best way to engage at a deep level connections made through online marketing for hosted apps and getting that long term buy-in, if it's even possible. It's easier (for me anyway) to do this face-to-face because there is a more solid context for the relationship.

Power users are definitely useful, but I find that catering too much to the power users (who are more willing to try new things and have more specific feature requests) results in the end in a product that may be a little overwhelming to new users.

But yes, the power users are very important and must be nurtured to help generate more users. They are your most vocal fans, and word of mouth is priceless.