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Is the Tipping Point Toast?

January 25, 2008 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 2 COMMENTS

Duncan Watts explains why he thinks Gladwell et. al are wrong about influencers. His thesis is that a trend can come from anyone and depends much more on the willingness of the masses to accept the trend than the "influence" of the individual. I think the core of the problem with influencer theory is that it's often confused with reach, in other words, those who are considered influential are actually the ones with the most reach within a given community.

For those interested, here's the PDF of Watts' full paper: Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation (which I plan to read on my plane ride home).

via Gareth // Tags: culture, marketing, networks

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COMMENTS

1Michal Migurski

I think Bruno Latour would have a lot to say about this, in his refutation of the "diffusion model" (http://mike.teczno.com/notes/books/science-in-action.html).

January 26, 2008

2Mike Arauz

You're totally right about this, Noah.

I read a summary of that paper a couple weeks ago, and it infuriated me. The study started off by assuming that all relationships are the same. That everyone has the same influence over everyone else. And they assumed that "influencers" were just people who had more connections than other people.

That's missing the whole point of what makes someone an influencer! An influencer earns that title because their opinion carries more weight than the average person's. If you start by removing that variable from the equation, and then testing the theory, of course it'll fail.

January 26, 2008