There's actually a really good book on this: Diffusion of Innovations by Rogers, http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0743222091/ http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/074322209

There's actually a really good book on this: Diffusion of Innovations by Rogers, http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0743222091/ http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0743222091/ The book places adopters into 5 categories, innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. The innovators are the few that have the means and risk-tolerance to constantly try out new ideas. The book estimates that about 2.5% of the adopters fall into this category. The early adopters are the next to adopt. They kind of serve as liaisons between the innovators and the rest of the world. The book estimates them at 13.5% of adopters. The early majority are the people that pay attention to what the early adopters are doing. They make up about 34%. The other two categories are uninteresting. To illustrate, HN would be the innovators, Lifehacker the early adopters, and Lifehacker's audience would be the early majority. There are various characteristics of early vs. late adopters. Most of them are as you would expect. Early adopters have more education, higher social status, more empathy, less dogmatism, more optimism, more social connections, etc. I highly recommend the book. It's aimed towards sociologists, but I didn't have too much trouble, and I'm certainly not sociologically inclined.