Diffusion of Innovations

The Diffusion of Innovations theory by Everett Rogers explains how ideas and technology spread through a market share graph. This graph shows us the lifespan of a new product introduced to the market. In this case, it'll be a new piece of technology.

This article from the Corporate Finance Institute gives me a more condensed definition of each of the 5 stages of a product. Innovators are the first people to try out the new technology, early adopters are the people who are willing to adopt the new technology into their lifestyle, the early majority are the people who buy the new technology before the average man gets around to it, the late majority are the people who were skeptical about the technology at first but eventually caved in and bought it, and the Laggards are the people who don't care about it at all.

An example of a piece of technology that follows the diffusion of innovation is streaming services. Netflix was the first-ever streaming service for television with 1000 movies available in its catalog. But it was still early on when Netflix had thousands of DVDs with its rental service. 

Hulu was the next streaming service to launch and it came a few months after Netflix launched theirs. I would consider Hulu to be an Early Adapter.

Now for the longest time, there was no competition for Netflix for years, Netflix had a monopoly on the streaming service realm. The only other competition was streaming services like "Crunchyroll", a streaming service for Anime but it was only for anime while Netflix was for pretty much all popular media. That was until Disney released Disney+ in 2019, the first true competition for Netflix, and people for once had a choice for streaming services because all of Disney-owned IPs; Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, you name it were all on there whilst Netflix still had everything else. That was until all of the larger companies saw how much money Netflix and Disney were making from this and decided to cash in as the Late Majority during COVID.

A downside of all of this is there are way too many streaming services now. Prior to now, it was just Netflix with a $10-$15 subscription. Now you need a subscription for Netflix, one for Disney, Max, Hulu, Peacock, Paramount, and the list goes on and on where instead of paying $15 a month, you're now paying $500 for all of this stuff. It would be so much easier for everything to be on one service for like $20 and you'd get so many users but nope, all of these companies are greedy for your money and don't care about convenience. 

It's really hard for the positives to outweigh the negatives in this situation because streaming services have become oversaturated with every large corporation wanting a piece of the streaming service pie. My suggestion would be to figure out what show you want to watch on its respective service. Pay for it and once you finish the show, cancel it and move on to something else. It's tedious but it's the most cost-effective.