The empty toolbar icon problem

There's a moment every Chrome extension has to survive, and it isn't the Store listing or the marketing site. It's the moment after Chrome says the extension is added. The icon is sitting in the toolbar and nothing useful has happened yet. That moment is quiet, and it's where a lot of small tools fail. Not because the idea was wrong, but because the first session never gave someone a reason to do the one action that makes the product real.