This Is Marketing: You Cant Be Seen Until You Learn to See

Case Study: Facebook and crossing the biggest chasm
In our lifetime, very few brands have crossed over fully to the mass market.
Starbucks, which is familiar to most people reading this, hasn’t made it all
the way, and neither has Heineken or even the bagel.
But Facebook has.
This graph shows what that looks like:
Each bar is users during a given year (the month changed midway, but
the idea is the same). Sometime around 2008, a whole new bunch of
everyone started using Facebook.
That leap happened because the reason for signing up changed from “this
is sort of interesting” to “this will help me immeasurably” to “I’m the last
person on earth who’s not using this.”

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Starting at Harvard was part of the secret. The insecure Harvard student
had an urgent status need: to find out where he or she stood in the pecking
order.
As it spread through the Ivy League, Facebook crossed one local chasm
after another. At each school, a neophiliac went first (because they like
going first) but the relentless ratchet of status kept it spreading. The more
friends you had on Facebook, the higher your status. The other people
already on Facebook had a status you admired (other Ivy League students).
Facebook was planted in the best possible spot, surrounded by insecure,
high-status young people, with fast internet connections, plenty of spare
time, and an insatiable desire to be seen, to connect, and to move up in
some invisible hierarchy.
Once it spread through that local tribe, it wasn’t hard to jump to other
colleges, and then, finally, the public.
This last chasm leap is the billion-dollar one. And once again, status
roles kick in. Because Facebook was able to combine nerdiness with status,
they were able to surround the middle of the market and create an
irresistible ratchet. Join in, or face your worst fear—be socially isolated.
As much as most marketers would like to make this last huge leap, it’s
unlikely. The market is just too big, and the typical network effect isn’t that
strong.