Does Ripple give an advantage to early adopters?
Advantages to being an early Ripple adopter:


Being able to get a lot of free ripples during their first distribution
Being able to establish oneself as a reliable and reputable Gateway that will be a go-to place for everyone
Establishing oneself as the first business to do something with Ripple - be it selling something or offering some services. Other early adopters would be then inclined to spend their ripples on your service just for the sake of using the system


Generally, there is not that vast of an advantage for being an early Ripple adopter as compared to using Bitcoin. That doesn't mean, however, that the advantages are not there.