- Web/network guru who knows lots about network effects releases research that undermines the value of the ‘maven’ in turning ideas into marketing epidemics
- He looks deeply into some long-standing common wisdom about networked-ness, such as the six degrees of separation theory, runs new tests and concludes that the results were unrepresentative …that normal people are just as important at spreading stuff as ‘influential’ types
- Further, he does a number of other interesting studies to suggest that it may be impossible for us to gauge at any one time why a given idea/product/pop band is able to ‘break out’ from the pack and go big time
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Comments
Doug Kessler February 1st, 2008
Love this post.
It seems to me that ‘tipping’ means different things in mass consumer markets than it does in B2B niches. For us in B2B, there really are mega-Influencers — the big bloggers in every market, the analysts, the key media.
But these people are influencers precisely because they’re NOT easily influenced. The only way to move them is with something new, interesting, fresh, thoughtful…
Ideas that tap into what’s really happening out there seem to have the most tipping potential. Ideas that address new trends, widening gaps, emerging concepts… these don’t come along every day but when they do, they’re on a fast-track to tipping.
John February 6th, 2008
Tipping Point is a great dinner-party anecdote generator (let me bore you with the psychology behind “Blues Clues”) but for me it was a thin thread of logic that offered a possibility rather than a certainty to explain away trends. I think we all agree that its all about content, context and connections but I’m just not convinced that it happens at such a micro-level as Gladwell likes to postulate.
Of course the advent of social networks has allowed us to combine the micro with the macro. Tools like Linkedin mean not only am I no more than 3, not 6, degrees of separation away from anyone, I can also connect with them directly without going down the chain. The rules are changing – we just need to make sure we keep up with them. Definitely agree its a blending of the micro and mass approaches.