I know of several companies that have taken severe hits by not filtering the “vocal minority” properly. The vocal minority is sometimes vocal because their problem isn’t big enough to “move the needle”. In those cases, you will find a staunch group who have a need that is likely to remain unmet due to poor or non-existent ROI. Those people, due to their shared circumstance, often bound through a self-reinforcing shared experience loop, becoming more polarized toward achieving their desired task. The net result is a passionate and vocal minority that can sometimes latch onto and persuade a new entrant or junior marketer to build product for them.

In these special cases, you get companies building product for a select few. The reality is that the noise was disproportionately high to the true market need signal.

Some folks got so emerged into this world that they lost a little bit the touch with the real world. I don't blame them, it happens to the best of us and that well designed virtual worlds have some sort of "addictive" nature is demonstrated nicely by the numerous MMORPG worlds out there.

I just mentioned World of Warcraft or before that Everquest to highlight some of the prime examples.