Consumer adoption of technological innovation moves from younger to older people. Young people adopt or grow up with innovations. As they age, the proportion of older people in the total population using the innovation increases. You can count on the user base for YouTube to get older until it is more like the total population.
Consumer adoption of technological innovation moves from urban to rural locations. In the case of YouTube, that is likely to be an infrastructure issue. The number of broadband connections will need to increase in rural areas before the number of YouTube users will increase but you can count on the YouTube user base to become more evenly distributed geographically.
Consumer adoption of technological innovation move from more affluent to less affluent households. In countries where broadband is not subsidized that means that YouTube use is likely to move down-market as more broadband connections become affordable. You can count on the YouTube user base in the future to more accurately reflect the income distribution of the countries where you do business.
Consumer adoption of technological innovation moves toward the mainstream at a predictable pace. It takes most technological innovations about fifteen years to move from first public trials to a saturation point. If YouTube follows a similar pattern, saturation will come around 2020. But there's a more important point to pay attention to for marketing purposes.
The adoption curve for most innovations is an S shaped, or Sigmoid, curve. The log phase of the curve, the part with the most rapid growth, usually begins around two years in and lasts until the midpoint is reached.
Using our dates from YouTube history, the upturn should have been around early 2007. But the YouTube curve turned up earlier.
If we use videos viewed as a guide, the fast-growth phase for YouTube began in the first quarter of 2006 when usage was almost doubling every month. That early turn was the result of two things. First, YouTube was an elegant service, a simple solution to a mass market problem. Second, the enabling technology, broadband connectivity, was already in place for many affluent households.
If you're a marketer, what's most important is that the time from the introduction of YouTube to the midpoint on the adoption curve is likely to be seven years. That means that by 2012 at the latest the mainstream adopters will be onboard in the US and the UK. In other countries, that date may move slightly in either direction depending primarily on the prevalence of broadband connections.
That gives you a window of less than two years to gain some early-mover advantage.
Action Ideas
Act now to gain a presence on YouTube and position your company so you're established by the time the mid-point of adoption is reached. Mine the video you already have. Just be sure to edit your clips for a length and tempo so they fit YouTube.
Key Points
However, be careful, just because you have video doesn‟t mean it‟s good or meaningful to the people in your market. Either modify it so it is, or don‟t use it. Key Points: Just because it‟s easy to do, doesn‟t mean it‟s the right thing to do. Check everything you intend to post on YouTube to make sure it represents your brand and moves your mission forward.
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