The Diffusion of Innovations

 "Have You Downloaded [Insert the Latest Technology]?" 

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.” – Elbert Hubbard

Every year there are new and breakthrough technologies that impact our world. Whether it is a new app, appliance, or medical technology the world is progressing extremely fast and people keep purchasing and trying out these new inventions. This whole process of a new innovation catching on and the excitement of it as well as the quietness once people have moved on is known as the Diffusion Theory.

The Diffusion Theory is a theory that “concerns with the spread of an innovation through a population” that is broken into 5 parts. 1) Innovators / Pioneers 2) Early Adaptors 3) Early Majority 4) Late Majority 5) Laggards

For example, Instagram...

Background: Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom in 2010 for iOS products. He is a computer programmer and entrepreneur who graduated from Stanford University. Instagram was an upgrade and different from Facebook, created in 2004. Before creating Instagram Systrom worked in marketing at Google. An app that brought a breath of fresh air to the social media world.

1) Innovators / Pioneers 

Systrom’s love for photography sparked his idea for Instagram. In college he built a website for him and his fraternity brothers to share pictures in a collective area. He studied abroad in Florence, Italy and that is when a professor showed him the film camera Holga, “which takes hip, vintage-looking photos.”

2) Early Adaptors 

Just two years after Instagram launched it already had 27 million users. Then, April 11, 2012, the app was released for Android phones “and was downloaded more than one million times in less than one day."

Early adopters want to experience this new technology first. You could say thousands of those millions of first users wanted to experience Instagram to see how it compared to Facebook. Many influencers on YouTube created Instagram accounts to be able to connect with their fans on a more personal level.

3) Early Majority

The Early Majority sees that the new technology is working for the Early Adaptors. They deem it safe and worth their time to try but were possibly a little scared to try it out first. By 2010 Instagram had acquired 110 million users, and just 5 years after the photo sharing app was released it already had 370 million users.

In 2018, Instagram hit a record number of 1 billion users and in 2020 it grew to 1.3 billion users. The Late Majority only start using a new technology because “they tend to adopt ideas later than the average person in a given social system." They are using this technology because they realize they need to, like there is a social or “economic necessity” driving them to conform. For example, it could be grandkids making there grandparents an Instagram account so they can keep up with them. Or a business that has always used Facebook as their social media page creating an Instagram page to attract more customers, especially ones not on Facebook.

5) Laggards 

Laggards are usually skeptical and part of the older generation. They did not grow up with the numerous amounts of technology that they see being used today and question its legitimacy and their safety when using the project. This could be something like the grandkids example I mentioned in the paragraph above, or someone getting Instagram just to stay in the know of friends and family.

While Instagram was created to be a new and fun space to share pictures it has dramatically changed from what it was originally in 2010. Instagram and 13 of their employees were bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion, and recently has contributed to over $20 billion of Facebook’s annual revenue. Kevin Systrom and an Insagram Co-founder were 2 of those 13 people who went to Facebook, but in 2018 Systrom and the other founder left Instagram. Instagram has added stories which is what Snapchat  is, a shopping section similar to Facebook Marketplace, and even reels which are short videos for content ranging from comedic to hauls which is what TikTok. These new advances have made some users feel like Instagram is straying away from its intended purpose. Influencers play a role in this too because users feel like they create unrealistic living or body standards and are just there to promote themselves or a company. Instagram has only been on the market for 12 years and has already made numerous changes to improve the app. It is just a waiting game to see what they do next.