A new innovation that revolutionized the world is Snapchat. Since being developed, it has become one of the most popular ways for people to communicate. According to TechCrunch, “ Snapchat has now grown to over 750 million monthly active users.” (Perez, Snapchat announces 750M monthly active users 2023.) When such a large percentage of people switch the way they interact with each other, it is not done overnight. There was a substantial process to get to that point.
It is important to understand what Diffusion Theory is to understand how Snapchat became so influential. “ The diffusion of innovations theory is a hypothesis outlining how new technological and other advancements spread throughout societies and cultures, from introduction to widespread adoption. The diffusion of innovations theory seeks to explain how and why new ideas and practices are adopted, including why the adoption of new ideas can be spread out over long periods.” (Halton, Diffusion of innovations theory: Definition and examples 2023.) 750 million people using Snapchat every single month is absolutely massive in terms of relevance.
The reason that Snapchat became such a popular innovation is because it became the cool app to use. Once people’s friends started using Snapchat due to the great way of communicating with sending pictures and messages to each other, they started to use it as well. The best way for something to become popular is to win broad social appeal. That is what happened with Snapchat. Particularly, once influencers started utilizing Snapchat a lot, that encourages even more people to adopt the new innovation of messaging on Snapchat. “ 34% of people say they use Snapchat more than other social media while hanging out with friends. This is likely because it’s become a common way to capture memories with those they’re closest to. 19% of users turn to Snapchat while shopping and 14% use it while attending social events.” (Shepherd, 24 essential snapchat statistics you need to know in 2023.) That appeal of their memories becoming easy to save and be able to share fun times with their friends is what made Snapchat so influential.
With any new innovation, there are different times when people start to use it. Over time, a successful innovation will get more popular. However, there need to be people that get involved earlier on to help make it more widely used. “The main players in the theory are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.” (Halton, Diffusion of innovations theory: Definition and examples 2023.) The early adopters here were those that started using the app when it was newer. I believe that one of the main reasons that Snapchat had so many early adopters was because the actual method of communication is much more efficient. Unlike other platforms which use longer posts, Snapchat had pictures that don’t need to save and messages that can go away quickly. These new innovations helped to make the app better for someone who is messaging a lot and doesn’t want to have to do long posts. By using Snapchat, they could easily showcase what they were up to and let their friends know. If people were going to a sports game, they could present those pictures on their Snapchat Story to their friends as well as message with other friends fast. This quick method of communication can be great for someone who has a lot to do and needs to get their messages out fast as well as to as big of an audience as they want.
A reason that so many people wait to adopt a new innovation can be because it could be intimidating in general to learn something that is very different from what someone is used to. This can apply to so many new innovations and technologies. However, some people may have preferred to wait and see if Snapchat became popular before spending time to learn how it works.
Additionally, some people choose not to be on social media at all. There are a variety of reasons for this such as privacy concerns and not wanting to be on their phones too much. As with so many other things, there are pros and cons to using Snapchat. Someone who chooses not to use it at all has the negative effect of not being able to see what their friends on Snapchat are sharing and be able to communicate with them on it. They do get a benefit of not having to worry about privacy because they aren’t using it. I believe that the negatives do not outweigh the positives in this situation because using Snapchat gives someone so many new opportunities such as being able to more easily communicate with their friends. This can be particularly true for those that want to show a large number of people what they are doing because they can send the same photo on Snapchat to so many people at once. People can make the decision of if the positives outweigh the negatives for them based on which things they value more with regard to concerns about privacy and being able to message with so many of their friends quickly.
References
Halton, C. (2023, June 21). Diffusion of innovations theory: Definition and examples. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/diffusion-of-innovations-theory.asp
Perez, S. (2023, February 17). Snapchat announces 750M monthly active users. TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/16/snapchat-announces-750-million-monthly-active-users/
Shepherd, J. (n.d.). 24 essential snapchat statistics you need to know in 2023. The Social Shepherd. https://thesocialshepherd.com/blog/snapchat-statistics#:~:text=34%25%20of%20people%20say%20they,it%20while%20attending%20social%20events.
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