Blog # 9
Nathaniel Bryant
April 19, 2021
Diffusion of Innovations: Facebook
___________________________________________________________________________________
Most forms of innovation, either technological or idea-based, can be applied to the idea of "Diffusion of Innovations Theory", created by Everett Rogers. This theory essentially shows the change of influence, at a fixed rate, on how or why an idea or technological innovation might spread.
 |
| Diffusion of Innovations Theory Graph |
A great example of an aged technological innovation that has had to age to be evaluated is Facebook. Facebook has been around since 2004 and has been through various phases through its prevalence and advancements.
Around the time Facebook came out, they had nearly no competitors except for MySpace. MySpace came out a year earlier and was seen originally as the main powerhouse in social media platforms until Facebook came in. They were out ahead and were getting investors and making large-scale investments and were making more moves to become a bigger platform.
So what had changed?
When Facebook originally came out it was originally started as a platform for young college students and which came off as a trendy and spiked interest in the development of Facebook since its early years. As it grew tremendously, investors started to look into the company. One thing Facebook did that MySpace did not do that determined the future of who leads the social media industry.
As MySpace was purchased by news corp, they began to work on the future of the platform by planning ahead too far and trying to gauge their company on basically gambling on how the company would go. By doing this, they continued to fall short when compared to Facebook's plan. Facebook actually let the marketplace move and advance on its own, and would determine the company from there. In doing this, Facebook was better at catering to its users and was able to better build the company in comparison to MySpace, which was losing out based on its faulty planning,
As it continued to grow past the early adopters who were younger college students, it eventually started to push into the early majority as Facebook gained 12 million users by 2006. Facebook was starting to come up and become popular as it spread to more users of different ages. Now families were getting on to share posts and pictures with families. Soon they gained a news feed and were moving forward as they become a more accessible platform with more tools and features to keep users engaged. Even adding things like a like button in 2009 was enough to keep users engaged.
As time went on, Facebook started to capture its late majority party. This group consisted of older users and began to become a platform for more older families and business. Facebook was at its peak here as it did have some new young and older users as well as a more mature group of users who had been on the platform for a while. It was one of the biggest platforms in the social media industry having over 1 billion frequent users in 2012. Now Instagram had just came out a year earlier and Snaphcat would come shortly after but they were far smaller than Facebook was.
The last group of laggards, or people who did not use the platform at all, had numerous reasons for their late or absent arrival. In today's society, Facebook is considered to be older and not as prevalent when compared to newer platforms. Most young people who get Facebook in this group are obligated to or almost never use it. Certain classes require one but so do other devices like the Oculus VR. There are many inactive users on Facebook in this group. The other half who did join or quit were deterred for privacy concerns. Facebook is infamous for their privacy infringements and data breaches.
The main downsides of Facebook are their constant and invasive data tracking tendencies. Whether it was taking private data, losing 530 million users' data in a breach and refusing to notify them, tracking users even after they log out, and the main issue that they continue to do these things despite being caught and manage to get away with it. Facebook is not the only problem because they control many other platforms such as Instagram. Recently they imposed some of the same data tracking for ads to Instagram in their terms of service. This is an example of how big companies can control the social media market.This is one of the main reasons I avoid Facebook as well as Instagram.
Now while I still have Instagram I try to not use it as much as there are numerous benefits to Facebook and their platforms. There is an opportunity for better communication, keeping up with peers and family, and for business. Still, what Facebook has can be found in alternative platforms with less risk.
The cost benefit analysis of Facebook compared to a new company would be fighting on different aspects rather then the same. Originally, it is common to think the popularity of a social media platform is based off popularity. Facebook makes a majority of its profit from advertisements and would have to rely on its ownership of smaller platforms as well as the selling of private data. The newer technology would not only have to have popularity but also a form of algorithm to stay in the data selling game to compete with Facebook.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Sources
- https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/timeline-facebook-s-privacy-issues-its-responses-n859651
No comments:
Post a Comment