Ten Minutes, Or You’re Toast

I’ve just launched a new website I hope will address what I think is a growing gap in our technological world: those who adopt early and those who don’t.

In my experience there are two different kinds of people: those who are quick to embrace change and those who aren’t. It’s not as if the latter group hates change; in fact, they are often the ones who more completely embrace that change into their life. It’s not, too, as if those who are quick to embrace change adopt that change into their lives. Indeed, most of those people who embrace the new tend, by definition, to as quickly discard it when something else comes along. Early adopts adopt and then drop. Late adopters adopt and stick.

Skype is my favorite example. Most people who use Skype are not early adopters, and many of them took a long time to get there. My BBC editor, for example, knows more about technology than I, but has only just gotten aboard Skype. It’s not as if he’s a Luddite; he just doesn’t embrace technological change as readily as others.

So, back to the ten minutes thing. Skype’s success was down to its ease of use. Sure, it had other things going for it, but it was by no means the first, nor necessarily the best service on offer. But it was easy. Easy to grasp, easy to install, easy to run (all that sneaky stuff to get around firewalls? Sneaky, but great!). Skype revealed itself in under 10 minutes and ushered in a revolution.

Other examples? SMS. Easy to figure out. T9 predictive text. Easy to figure out. Google. Easy to figure out. I’m sure there are more, but they’re not as many as you might think.

So, the rule of thumb for tenminut.es is a simple one: reveal your worth within ten minutes or I’m gone. I don’t mean let me figure you out in your entirety, all you potential and all your value, but at least give me an idea of whether you’re worth your time. Of course, if during those ten minutes I also discover your weaknesses, they’ll be in the review too.

First under the microscope have been networking site Zorpia, which earned a stinker of a review, calendar synchronizer Calgoo which fared slightly better, big file sender mailbigfile.com and online virus checker nanoscan. No one pays to get a review, and I’m just writing about what catches my attention, not in any particular order or preference. If you’d like the tenminut.es treatment, however, or you want right of reply on anything I’ve written, feel free to email me.