Srikant Sharma's Blog

The mass-adoption phase of social media is now!

January 29th, 2009

Many of you may be familiar with the Rogers curve for technology adoption – it profiles the typical growth curve for new technology from the standpoint of adoption by end users. This hat-shaped curve has been proven to fit a wide-variety of adoption cycles – ranging from consumer devices, enterprise software, hardware, new technology habits/trends, etc. Of course, one key caveat is that this curve works only in instances where the technology/trend is successful – the curve would assume entirely different and contorted shapes (usually a cliff-drop at some point along the curve) in instances where the particular technology didn’t eventually succeed.

The social media / social computing revolution is clearly following this “hat-shaped” adoption profile. In fact, we are currently in the Early Majority phase – that’s the third segment from the left, just prior to the peak.

The Early Majority phase is a critical one – by the time we are in this phase, the trend is already established, taken root, and in the process of growing to an irreversible, critical mass. From a business standpoint, this is also the point where there is the greatest risk of competition getting ahead – conversely, it also represents a valuable opportunity to gain competitive strength by being a innovator.

The social media/marketplace trend started in earnest in 2005 – and through 2006, we were in the “innovator” phase. This was the time MySpace, Facebook, etc were taking hold – and were largely viewed as “interesting, but I don’t get it!”. 2007 and the early part of ‘08 was the “early adopter” phase, and many savvy enterprises that were able to see the power and lasting potential of this social computing revolution got on board during this time. This was a particularly important phase of evolution – it defined and shaped the movement of these technologies from an enterprise standpoint, and also moved them from being consumer-centric and casual, to serious and business-value linked.

Since sometime mid-2008, we are definitely in the Early Majority phase – and the downturn in the economy, with the resulting pressure on costs and increasing productivity and efficiency, will almost certainly result in an acceleration of this phase. And businesses need to pay very close attention – this phase could easily end-up defining who wins and who loses.

… as they say, the game is just starting!

Entry Filed under: Connecting with the customer