Diffusion of Innovations

Image taken from Pixabay

Using the diffusion of innovations theory, created by Everett Rodgers, I would like to explore one of the more recent social media platforms: Snapchat. The innovators period began when Snapchat was created by three Stanford University students Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy in 2011. The premise of Snapchat was a social media app where content disappeared within moments. The original name for the platform was Picaboo, but the name was quickly changed to Snapchat in September of 2011.

Image taken from Wikipedia

Today, Snapchat has 360 million users each month. Clearly, the platform has made it big, but how did it get there? Using the diffusion of innovations theory, the early adopters of the platform were college and high school students in and around Stanford University and the
Los Angeles area. Eventually, the app's popularity began to spread to other geographic areas with the early majority of users still comprising mostly high school and college students. An article by Forbes discussed the importance of timing in the success of Snapchat. If you think about 2011, many smartphones came out with a camera on the front screen, which allowed users to easily take selfies. This separate innovation, in my opinion, propelled the popularity of Snapchat.

Snapchat is almost ten years old, but the platform continues to evolve to attract more users. It's hard to say if Snapchat's popularity will eventually decline. If other social media sites are any indication, it truly depends on how Snapchat chooses to adapt to the other innovations in technology. For now, the founders of Snapchat can be pretty proud of the platform's success.

Links:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/02/16/how-snapchat-gained-success-by-going-viral-at-high-schools-across-los-angeles/#75d494173b36
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-snapchat