A few years ago, the sight of someone walking down the street talking into a Bluetooth headset not only turned heads, it also turned stomachs.

“How weird!”

“How dorky!”

“I would never use one of those!”

Well, fast forward to today and not only are people wearing Bluetooth headsets, they are readily accepted by an ever connected society.

In fact, it’s probably safe to say that if you DON’T have some sort of apparatus that allows you to walk and talk or drive and talk, you are pretty much at a disadvantage socially and professionally.

Believe it or not, there is a scientific theory that explains the above scenario.  It’s called the “diffusion of innovations” and it describes how a new idea takes hold.  Innovators are the first to embrace the concept, followed by early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and finally laggards.

But whenever it is you decide to hop on the innovation superhighway, your decision is informed by two pieces of information.  Is the innovation easy to use and is it useful?

When Facebook was first introduced, it may have been easy to use, but many people failed to see how it was useful to them.  However, when enough people were on the platform and it became the best way to catch the latest pictures from the family reunion, people perceived usefulness and signed up in full force. Today more than 1.2 billion people are on Facebook.

The Nike Fuel band, a bracelet that tracks all activity and calories burned, is obviously a useful tool, but in order for mass adoption to occur, it needed to be perceived as easy to use.  The demo video for the tracking device repeats the phrases “easy to use” and “everyone can do it” five times.

Thanks to the diffusion of innovation, people no longer see some forms of wearable technology as something out of “The Minority Report.”  But as new tools are introduced, people often draw a line in the sand, maintaining they would NEVER use such a thing. Take, for instance, Google Glass.

How could a pair of glasses that both received and transmits information be something a Realtor would want to use, let alone NEED to use?

Let’s consider the home property listing video, a pre-requisite these days when marketing a home.  Thanks to inexpensive technology, potential home buyers can view a video of a home from the comfort of their couch.  But what if the homebuyer’s agent wore a pair of Google Glass frames to the home and interacted with the client on the phone as she walked through the house. Clients could view the home in real time, ask the agent questions live from the property and get tailored views of any angle of the home just by asking the agent to turn to a specific place.

We just upped the ante when it comes to home shopping.  Clients can do a walk through without setting foot in the house.

So it may be a bold statement, but I predict that in two short years, the real estate industry will embrace wearable technology in all forms as a way to better serve the client.

What’s in YOUR closet?

Chris Smith will be speaking at ERA IBC 2013 in Austin, TX March 21-24, 2013. Register here.

photo credit: clintonjeff via photopin cc