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January 28, 2008

Is the Tipping Point toast? 'A rare bunch of cool people just don't have that power'

Fast Company | Read Full Story >

In the past few years, Watts—a network-theory scientist who recently took a sabbatical from Columbia University and is now working for Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO)—has performed a series of controversial, barn-burning experiments challenging the whole Influentials thesis. He has analyzed email patterns and found that highly connected people are not, in fact, crucial social hubs. He has written computer models of rumor spreading and found that your average slob is just as likely as a well-connected person to start a huge new trend. And last year, Watts demonstrated that even the breakout success of a hot new pop band might be nearly random. Any attempt to engineer success through Influentials, he argues, is almost certainly doomed to failure.

“It just doesn’t work,” Watts says, when I meet him at his gray cubicle at Yahoo Research in midtown Manhattan, which is unadorned except for a whiteboard crammed with equations. “A rare bunch of cool people just don’t have that power. And when you test the way marketers say the world works, it falls apart. There’s no there there.”


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Previous comments include

#1 Master N. Servant says:

in my countrie, i was one of Influentials in musical industry
now they say influentials not important
not understand

#2 Something to Do says:

"in my countrie, i was one of Influentials in musical industry"

wow, maybe you should have stayed there.
besides what do you give a shit about this for anyway? 'Influentials' is only a marketing term/strategy that helps to serve the M A J O R L A B L E S you hate so much anyway.


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