I think the idea is that early adopters can evangelize your product and create its foothold, but it's the late adopters who play mass market kingmakers.
this is key. Look at Google. they target technical types, but for joe average, their product is just as usable as the compitition, who explicitly targets the average user.
Joe average is going to have a technical person setup his computer- If that technical person, say, makes firefox the default browser, assuming it mostly works, joe average is going to use firefox. This might also be why OSX is doing so much better than previous macOS versions. Whenever a non-technical person asks me for a laptop reccomendation, I tell them to get a mac, in part because I know they might come to me for help (and I'll be damned if I start rooting around in a windows box that isn't properly backed up. Reboot, reboot, then format and reinstall, I say.)
the other side of this is that it needs to work for joe average... this is why Linux on the desktop took so long to take off (it looks like it's getting a toehold in the low-end- by 'just working' for simple tasks) even now, linux on the desktop only 'just works' if you don't need commercial software.
so yeah, you must target the early adoptors, but targeting the early adoptors alone is not enough. You must make it usable for the average person.
(which is funny, because I've put almost zero effort into the usability of my product. I don't have a support budget, so if you don't know UNIX well, eh, for now I'm not the best product for you.)
"Look at Google. they target technical types, but for joe average, their product is just as usable as the compitition, who explicitly targets the average user."
Do you mean search? Its not the case that yahoo or live search targets only at average ppl. It very well targets you and me too. On the other hand with Gmail, it targets only at savvy ppl. People are not used to conversations or tagging or archiving.
http://friendfeed.com/e/41230d54-d425-07c8-38a3-4bada029126b