The mechanics of innovation adoption have been extensively studied (e.g. [1]). It takes the innovators (which are often shrewd introverts) to create new things and early adopters (well-connected extroverts) to spread the word to the next group. As adoption continues, maturity increases and prices go down. At the same time, more and more people are using the product, which convinces more rosk-averse people to have a look. At best the result is a chain reaction, but it always follows a sigmoid curve. And due to more efficient means of communication, the adoption curves are still accelerating. It took decades until telephones or TVs were established. Today we got smartphones, HackerNews and the Twitter firehose. Suffice it to say that, yes, innovators are always a fringe part of a group, and they better don't care too much what others are saying. I would say this property is to some extent scale free, as one finds the same patterns within research communities which, as one would expect, should _all_ consist of innovators.

[1] Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm