"Turns out your product wasn’t ready for all the international users. Or the power users. Or the teens. They want to use your product in all the wrong ways, posting bad and weird things."
It is basically in line with the infamous "You're holding it wrong".
The article’s conclusion is that businesses shouldn’t chase big app launches or “going viral”, because that tends to not be valuable for the business, and that instead they should go for gradual, slow growth. In other words, the article doesn’t blame the users, it blames businesses using the wrong strategy.
For me personally this conclusion doesn't mean much, as the author bases it on his single experience with his app that by his own wasn't really ready for real world.
I don’t necessarily agree with the article’s conclusion. I’m saying that the article’s point isn’t to blame users, it’s to give advice to businesses about how to avoid that failure mode.
That’s not the articles conclusion, it’s the excuse.
Yes slow steady growth is a generic “good advice” but overall if the product was ready and provided value to the users they would have used the product.
A conclusion would be don’t ship a half baked product… And definitely don’t blame users for not liking your product, not understanding it, not being open to it at the time etc…
The users are always right and even if they are technically wrong it is still the fault of the product designer for not accounting for that in the first place.
“We do not blame users, ever.” is about as close to a prime directive as you can get regardless of what product or service you deliver.
"Turns out your product wasn’t ready for all the international users. Or the power users. Or the teens. They want to use your product in all the wrong ways, posting bad and weird things."
It is basically in line with the infamous "You're holding it wrong".