Blog Post #6

    The Diffusion theory is "a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations_ There are four main elements that influence the spread of a new idea. They are "the innovation itself, communication channels, time, and a social system.   

    A newer social media platform, Tiktok, started out very small and then blew up into one of the most popular apps used today. Looking at Tiktok through the Diffusion theory it started off as an app named musically and then turned into Tiktok, so it has been around for a while. Musically was made in the year 2014 and was popular in this year too. The app itself was made for dancing  and funny videos. The videos ranged in short time spans (15 seconds). In the year of 2018, Musically had become Tiktok so that was 4 years where the platform was growing. That is the time aspect to the Diffusion theory.

    Communication channels are when the application switched over from musically to Tiktok. Since Musically was used by millions of people when the communication channel switched and got a new look, new users came and used the application to see what the uproar was about. The social system is the people that use the app. The age group that uses these apps vary from age 16-35 , so it is a large social system. I think it really had gotten big in the past couple of years, especially in the quarantine times because it gave people something to do. When I first heard about it, someone told me I should download this app very similar to vine and musically, so I downloaded it and got obsessed. 

    So many people became early adopters of the app because so many people discussed and talked about how funny or fun it was. The late adopters were the ones who previously had vine or musically and knew how addicting it would get and decided against getting the app, the non-downloaders also fall into this category. The negatives is getting addicted to the application and getting to the point where you can't go without it. Peoples screen time for Tiktok can range from 3-10 hours a day. There was also a bug in tiktok where it gave out some of your personal information, so people were extra cautious on downloading it.