Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

How many users does it take to be able to say that your product is a success?

Is it 53,652?

Too many companies are targeting an audience of 53,651. That’s how many people subscribe to Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch blog feed.

Or is it 25,001?

Thanks Josh for the outstanding post and putting the gap between the Web 2.0 geeks and Mainstreet USA front and center. Remember - the first 25,000 users are the same dudes (such as me) that play with everything. Oh – and yes – I’ve fallen victim to this also.

Demand tends toward infinity when the service is free, and there are legions of geeks, edge cases, or whatever you want to call them, that will try every little thing once. Unfortunately they'll probably never try it a second or third time. Robert Scoble called this the seven day test. If he was still using something after seven days then he knew it was a good tool.

So when you claim some outrageous number of users, my first question would be:

How many of those users are still using your service consistently after one month? Or even after seven days?