There's a new report out (pdf) that characterises the early adopter segment for technology in US consumer market.  No surprises really that they tend to be well-heeled, young males. The suggestion is that they represent the margin of change for mainstream consumption. As ReadWriteWeb points out, however, the product development industry also tends to be populated by the same "digitally savvy" segment - so may be limited in its insights to the majority and a little biased in its expectations of product features that translate as value to the rest. This is not a new debate: O'Reilly calls them alpha geeks and pointed out some time ago how to gain insight from them by applying common sense filters to make appropriate decisions.