So are all of the people who worked on Google+. The notion that anyone here, or any individual at Google, is a thought leader whose own personal use of technology represents where the industry is going just because they're a high level developer seems like narcissism.

I don't think we should be completely written off as "geeks", you're right about that, but it should certainly be acknowledged that we're a small (heavily) biased sample of the general population and our preferences need to be taken with a grain of salt.

> A lot of us are high level developers, architects, consultants, and so on.

Which in the eyes of most people other than those you have listed, makes us geeks. If we're talking about leadership, it isn't so much how we see ourselves that matters, but how others see us.

The public at large doesn't really give a shit if some developers, architects, or consultants want to send a message by deleting their google accounts and refusing to use google services.

They care, it just takes a little longer at times. One day, a person wakes up and realizes that the technophiles are someplace else, all of those blogs, videos and snippets they've been seeing hit home, and they have been personally affected by a real name policy. It starts someplace.

or the technophiles look up and everyone's using whatsapp while we're asking why google isn't using XMPP anymore. This meme needs to die. Sure, gmail rode the wave of the tech-in-crowd to success, but there are far more examples that didn't, or did but went nowhere. If we were actually a good crystal ball it would be a whole lot easier to invest in the market.

What examples might those be? When I look at many products that had the tech-in-crowd blessing and yet failed, often it appeared to be because of lapses in user experience and some humility.

It doesn't require a crystal ball to know when a product solves a problem for users in a way that leaves a good taste in one's mouth.

However, I'm still discovering great products and apps from technophiles who have found solutions to problems that impact me. I've also left detritus behind, not because the awesome folks of HN said it was time, but because of well reasoned thoughts that start here (I tend to favor here) and in other technology springboards.

At the end of the day, I believe that mainstream ultimately wakes up. The kernals for change start small though.

Personally, I don't follow a compass held by just the tech pundits or mainstream - I head toward the smell of good user experience.