The Diffusion Theory
One piece of modern-day innovation that I took a deeper dive into is TikTok. TikTok was released in
September 2016. Today it has 1 billion monthly active users. TikTok is not the first company to invent a vertical short-form video platform, however they are definitely the most successful in doing it.
The first app to execute short-form, vertical video content was Vine. This platform crushed with this concept and had great success. Following that was Musically. I believe TikTok had so many early adopters because they saw the success of the brands before them doing the same product, and believed it would be as big if not bigger than those two companies. There are definitely reasons people are not adopters. One reason being people not wanting to have any social media presence. I've seen this firsthand with my father, where he wants nothing to do with any social media platform. Secondly, not wanting any of their information to be given to the TikTok platform. There have been multiple cases between the U.S. government and TikTok, and not everyone trusts the platform.
To Participate or to Not Participate
The choice to participate or not participate in a brand, trend, product, or service is one that consumers have to make every day. For me, I weighed the pros and cons of using TikTok. In the pro category, it is a platform where the company I work for conducts a majority of their advertising and how their service gains popularity. Two, it is an entertainment platform. I enjoy being able to lie down and scroll on TikTok. These two factors outweigh the negatives for me. However, for other people, I could see the positives not outweighing their negatives. As TikTok continues to grow in popularity, it will continue to impact millions of users, and late adopters will continue to grow.
