Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread. Everett Rogers popularized this idea through his book and proposed five main elements that influence the spread of a new idea. These five elements are the innovation itself, adopters, communication channels, time and a social system. All of these make up the diffusion of innovations theory.
Facebook. Facebook was an app originally created at Harvard for students to judge the attractiveness of other fellow students. This was shut down after two days due to the violation of university policy. Despite this shut down, 450 people continued to go to Facesmash, which is what is was called at this time. This encouraged Zuckerberg to register the new URL for Facebook that we recognize today.
So looking at this creation of Facebook, we can see how the diffusion theory is used. The innovation itself was created by a group of Harvard students and the early adopters were other Harvard students. The students used Facebook or Facesmash which sparked Zuckerberg's interest in the app. At the time, social media was not around or used as frequently so this app introduced a new way of communicating.
spread among universities is what Facebook needed to gain traction to become a popular social media app. The rate at which the app was gaining popularity increased and by the end of 2004, over a million users were on Facebook.
Facebook continued to introduce new parts to its social media such as "tagging" others in different posts and creating a "wall" that your friends can comment on or leave posts. These new features continue to push the app to appeal to a bigger audience.
Overall Facebook has played a big role in social media history. It was not a super popular app at first, however, it gained the popularity it needed through diffusion. Now it is one of the most used social media apps in todays world.
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