Twitter Through the Lens of the Diffusion Theory

Rogers’ Diffusion Theory manages itself through 5 different stages: innovation, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Each one of these categories can have a major impact on whether or not an innovation is seen by the public as a positive or negative thing. Innovation is a broad term, but nearly everything that is put out into the world can be categorized under Rogers’ Diffusion Theory. Society eventually has the final say on whether something is positive or negative, and the 5 stages demonstrate that very clearly. An extremely important category of innovation to look at is social media, as every site has their own quirks and interesting features that could make or break their site. Rogers’ Diffusion Theory will be used to take an inside look at one of the most popular social media sites currently, Twitter. While there are plenty of positive and negative arguments regarding the app, I will analyze both sides and make a decision based on the data.

When Twitter first made its way onto the Internet in 2006, it started as a small site that had no more than 18,000 tweets being sent out in a day. The users at this point were seen as the innovators, as they were the ones that kickstarted the site before it even became remotely successful by just testing out a new creation. Eventually, as the site expanded and the user database began to grow more and more, the people joining the site became early adopters who could credit themselves with being among the first to hop on the platform. These users were a big part in why Twitter became what it is today, as they were the original guinea pigs for something that had just begun.

As time went on, the user database continued to grow exponentially. From 2008-10, Twitter grew from having 6 million monthly users to almost 55 million, an incredible leap from the 18,000 tweets that were being sent out daily just two years earlier. The people that joined during this time are known as the early majority, as they were the first real jump from Twitter being a startup to actually becoming the next big thing.

While Twitter continued to grow and become a billion dollar company, its database also expanded by a whole lot. By 2015-17, Twitter became a staple in the social media community, and it was almost frowned upon if you didn’t have an account if you were over the age of 15. The people that joined around this time are known as the late majority, as they hopped on as Twitter was nearing a popularity peak- while they can’t say they were among the first to join, they definitely are not the last.

There are good reasons why Twitter gets waves of criticism and why the platform has plenty of laggards, maybe more than any other social media site. Twitter has had plenty of issues with privacy and censorship recently, as numerous high-profile accounts have been banned from the app with the reasoning coming from their terms of use. People see this as a threat to freedom of speech, but since Twitter is privately owned, they have the ability to do what they please. Another reason why people may not hop on Twitter is the cyberbullying aspect of it, as it is very simple to create a fake account or hide behind a screen and send hateful messages out into the world. There are also plenty of fabricated or misleading posts on Twitter, and it is impossible to fact-check everything, regardless of how hard the app tries.

Overall, I personally think Twitter’s positives outweigh their negatives. While they have plenty of issues that are sometimes annoying to work around, I believe Twitter is a great spot to find news, share updates, and overall have a positive experience. I truly think that the positives of Twitter outweigh the negatives.