September 12, 2006

I did get it. I think.

By Roland Hachmann in Digital Culture, Pop Culture | 1 comment

Seth Godin has a post called They didn’t get the memo, referring to Rogers Diffusion of innovations while stating numbers of technology adoption:

31.4% of Americans don’t have internet access.

90% of the people in France have not created a blog.

88% of all users have never heard of RSS.

59% of American households have zero iPods in them.

30% of internet users in the US use a modem.

When you look at the numbers from a different angle, it doesn’t look all that bad:

68,6% of Americans already have internet access.
10% of the people in France have already created a blog.
12% of all users have already heard of RSS.
41% of American households already have iPods in them.
70% of internet users in the US do not use a modem any longer.

Considering Rogers types of adopters (innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%)) and assuming, that you can plot the figures of technology adoption in a linear fashion to the figures of Rogers adopters types (I know, I know…):

internet access: reached the “late majority” already
Blogs in France: still only “early adopters”
RSS: still only “early adopters”
iPods: already “early majority”
remaining modem usage: only the “late majority” remaining

One problem with this (apart from the “hands-on-approach” to statistics): Would the percentage brackets of Rogers adopters-types still be relevant today? They were defined in 1962, when even “innovators” probably only found a few new gadgets every year and had lots of time to explore them. And the “late majority” most likely took many years to adopt anything…

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