The Diffusion Theory of Twitter

    Diffusion Theory is no new thought or model. Theorized by Everett Rodgers in 1962 the “Diffusion Theory” is a popular concept on how innovations spread throughout the population or a certain community. One innovation that has been so crucial over the past 20 years is social media. As we stand in 2020 we have no shortage of social medias at our disposal. With new ones popping up left and right nearly everyone can find one that fits their wants or needs. One that has stood out over the past 6 years has been Twitter. Founded in 2006 Twitter is a platform that anyone can receive and tweet information instantly. Thus giving anyone a voice on certain topics or ideas. Over the past 6 years twitter has grown exponentially thanks to President Trump's addiction to the platform. He uses this as a way to give information (occasionally disinformation) to the American people without the buffer of the media. 

When we look at the actual chart related to the Diffusion Theory we see five distinct sections. 

  • Pioneers- 2007-2010

  • Jack Dorsey and his cofounders created Twitter and launched the platform in 2007. Called the “SMS of the internet” the platform saw crazy growth throughout the first year, recording that it had over 400k tweets per quarter in their first year. Throughout the major events in 2009 and 2010 Twitter saw up to 143,199 Tweets per second following the Japanese TV show “Castle in the Sky”


  • Early Adapters 2010-2014

  • Twitter acquires an app developer to push the platform out on IOS and Mac. Twitter underwent a revamp with “Retweets, hashtags and @mentions”. The social media app “Vine” is acquired by Twitter, and it starts to grow at an exponential rate. September 2013 reports that Twitter is seeing over 400 Million tweets a day. Following this report Twitter ($TWTR) goes public on the NYSE starting at $25.94 a share.


  • Late Majority 2015-2016

  • Twitter acquires Periscope, a live streaming platform. Prior to the 2016 Election President Donald Trump uses twitter as his main way of communicating with the public. Growing the app exponentially. Late 2016 Twitter announces they are shutting down their popular platform Vine.


  • Late Adapters 2017-2019

  • Twitter continues to redesign the app and grow at very fast rates. Expands from the traditional 140 word count to 280 words. 


  • Laggers 2020

  • The App reported to have their highest amount of growth during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Twitter also announced they will be censoring misinformation during the 2020 Election. Causing outrage from President Trump, nevertheless his usage of the app did not decline. During the summer of 2020 Twitter saw the largest compromise of accounts. Hackers scammed thousands of people after taking control of 130 “High-Profile Accounts”. Twitter sees an average of 500 million tweets per day, averaging to about 200 billion tweets per year. 



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