All Annotations of Is the Tipping Point Toast? -- Duncan Watts -- Trendsetting[Preview]

saved by27 people, first byBrendan M on 2008-01-27, last byEzra F on 2008-02-03

• And each person also paid attention to what was happening around him:
  • on 2008-01-30 20:41:28 Lampertina
    - here's where the concept of "attention economy" might come in
• Why didn't the Influentials wield more power? With 40 times the reach of a normal person, why couldn't they kick-start a trend every time? Watts believes this is because a trend's success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend--not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded. And in fact, when Watts tweaked his model to increase everyone's odds of being infected, the number of trends skyrocketed.
  • on 2008-01-30 20:46:16 Lampertina
    - I think this again points to the ideas put forward in "attention economies" -- when you've primed the audience to *pay attention*, viral effects are more likely to occur : "...whether everyone else is easily persuaded..." -- which can only happen if you have their eyeballs in the first place
• Watts's computer models are "interesting," Keller admitted, but too academic to reflect reality. In contrast, Keller argues, his firm has studied tens of thousands of Influentials by identifying people highly active in their communities, an elite 10% that engage in advice-giving conversation up to five times more frequently than the average American. "They're fonts of word of mouth," Keller insists. And ahead of the curve, too: In the 20 years he has been polling them, Keller has found they began using computers, mobile phones, and the Internet years before the mainstream. What's more, his polls have found that more than two-thirds of people who get word-of-mouth product recommendations either buy something based on it, or plan to.
  • on 2008-01-30 20:48:21 Lampertina
    - perhaps it would be appropriate to say that some "influentials" can focus attention on a larger scale, due perhaps also to contextual factors?
  • on 2008-01-30 20:49:07 Lampertina
    - and that this happens in contexts where the attention is already primed to some extent, possibly to focus on that person or on what s/he represents/ is discussing

• on 2008-01-30 22:08:20 Jljohansen
  We're all Influencers!
  
• on 2008-02-02 00:48:50 Pgillin
  Duncan Watts is upsetting the marketing establishment with research that demonstrates that influentials don't matter. This article summarizes his work and presents some compelling reasons to believe that viral phenomena have a lot more to do with random chance than with influence. It concludes: "The ultimate irony of Watts's research is that, if you really buy it, the most effective way to pitch your idea is ... mass marketing."