53651 Users Can't Be Wrong...

But they often are. As pointed out by Josh Kopelman, this is the readership of TechCrunch (current count at right), without counting readers who go direct to the website (a lot). This crowd has a very different relationship to the net than the mass market. Many of them believe that the internet will someday become a global brain, which all logic & data will move into. Near-term, they believe the internet is the PC.

That is not a vision that the mass market will ever embrace. Ordinary users have a healthy fear of centralized control, and a rational aversion to organizations that would rent property that individuals would benefit from owning, like their data. If you sign up the entire TechCrunch readership to your shiny new Web 2.0 app service, you might not sign up anyone else.