A look at the demographics of early adopters drawn from sparkling new publishing platforms Svbtle, Medium, and App.net.
Tech startups live and die by their early adopters.
Beta testers do a lot more than find and report bugs. They offer feedback on the product, and tell the founders what works and what doesn't. Their insights can cause a company to change course early on before it's fully committed to a product direction. And when early users fall in love with the product and evangelize it among their peers, they create a virtuous cycle of demand that can mean the difference between a successful release and an uncomfortable post-launch investor meeting.
In addition, beta users of high-profile tech startups are often drawn from influential members of the founders' inner circles. These connections include venture capitalists, other founders, angel investors, and well-known bloggers, amplifying the reach of the startup even more when it opens its doors to the general public.
But for all their power, little is known about the demographics of these users (often called "alpha geeks") other than their tendency to adopt new technology before the rest of humanity. Where do they live? What do they look like? How closely do they resemble the users who will follow in their footsteps?
To find out, we dug into the user bases of three recently-launched publishing platforms: Svbtle, an invite-only blog publishing network; Medium, a minimalist publishing platform from the Twitter dudes (also currently invite only); and App.net, an open infrastructure-level version of Twitter (open to anyone, but charges $50 a year). The results paint a portrait of typical early-adopters: white, male, and (at least in the case of Medium) mostly influencers based in major tech hubs.
(Skip to the end, if you'd like to read more about the methodology, like how we determined "whiteness.")
White Males vs. Everyone Else
The tech, startup, and venture capital scenes all have reputations for being both overwhelmingly white and male. Some argue that the industry suffers from a serious lack of diversity in investing and hiring decisions.
How white and male is the early-adopter crowd? As it turns out, quite. White males make up 81 percent of the users at Svbtle, 88 percent of users at App.net, and 61 percent of users at Medium. It appears that Medium is somewhat more diverse than the other two platforms. It's important to note, however, that Medium is the youngest of the three, and has the smallest pool of beta users as well, so the data is less statistically significant.
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