Social media, smartphones, and computers became popular through the process of Diffusion of Innovation. This process explains how products gain popularity and spreads through a population. I decided to use Facebook since social media is so prominent in society.
Mark Zuckerburg is the Pioneer of Facebook. He was the creator of Facebook in 2004. The Early Adopters were the students at Harvard who used Facebook as a networking website between students, professors, and alumni. The early majority were students from other colleges throughout the country joining Facebook. At this stage, Facebook is starting to cater to its users by giving users the option to post classified ads and post on each other's public "wall." About a year later, Facebook is at its peak and opens up to anyone over 13 that has an email address. The Late Majority population could be described as people over 30 at the time. In their eyes, this age range was hesitant to make the transition from Myspace to Facebook. The Laggard population was the parents and grandparents of the early majority population.
As I mentioned in my previous blog post about Facebook, Zuckerberg's timing for launching Facebook was a key factor. There were other sites like Facebook but they were not keeping up with the times and ultimately faded away as Facebook took the spotlight. Ironically the same thing that happened to myspace is happening to Facebook. Other forms of social media are being introduced and becoming more popular than the one that started it all.