The Early Adopters Aren't Always Who You Think They Are

Within the tech world, the explosive growth of Twitter has (literally) been front page news over the past six months, with Twitter appearing on the cover of TIME Magazine and New York Magazine, among others. What's interesting is that Twitter's phenomenal growth hasn't come from where you'd think it would come from -- early adopters in the young teen demographic. In fact, as Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times points out, teenagers (like the New Jersey teen pictured above) would rather text their friends a message rather than post it on Twitter. Instead, Twitter has been embraced by an older demographic:

"Twitter’s unparalleled explosion in popularity has been driven by a decidedly older group. That success has shattered a widely held belief that young people lead the way to popularizing innovations. "The traditional early-adopter model would say that teenagers or college students are really important to adoption,” said Andrew Lipsman, director of industry analysis at comScore. Teenagers, after all, drove the early growth of the social networks Facebook, MySpace and Friendster. Twitter, however, has proved that “a site can take off in a different demographic than you expect and become very popular,” he said. “Twitter is defying the traditional model.”

Which raises an interesting question: Where else have the traditional early adopters not been the ones to spark widespread adoption of a new innovation? The New York Times points out that the Kindle, iPhone and GPS devices, among others, haven't experienced exponential adoption curves by young teens either. With a wave of Baby Boomers set to retire soon, it may just be the case that marketing to the 52-to-59 year-old demo may be more effective than marketing to the 12-19 year-old demo...

[image: New York Times]

Comments

[David Locke]

Early adopters are the entry point across ALL markets. They are willing to take the risk to be the first to adopt.

As individuals, we all take risks. It is where we take risks that matters. I will never ever have laser eye surgery. Software no risk.

The early adopters are not necessarily the technical enthusiasts (geeks). Separate these two groups by charging some money. Free will get your technical enthusiasts. A higher price will get you early adopters.

The first buyers of ANY and EVERY product are the early adopters, regardless of their demographics, because it is psychographics that really determines who the early adopters are.

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