Tipped out?
Duncan Watts argues against the popular idea, captured by Malcom Gladwell in The Tipping Point, that “influentials” inspire trends. In networks, you have connected nodes, and hubs, which are nodes with many connections. Influentials are the hubs of social networks, and marketers assume that these well-connected people drive trends. According to an article in the current issue of Fast Company, “influentials have no special role in trends at all.”
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.”
Marketing people are skeptical of Watts’ contention, and so am I. Granted, “your average slob is just as likely as a well-connected person to start a huge new trend,” but starting a trend isn’t the same as spreading it. I would argue that trends have foster adoption via influentials.
Another point: Watts is looking at abstract models that don’t necessarily evaluate the quality of the content of the “trend” – you can send your cookies to all the influentials in the worlds, and you won’t create a market if the cookies taste like dirt. And there’s also the quality and relevance of the links – some influentials may circulate cookies better than others. Context is always important, and I suspect it’s not factored into Watts’ simulations.
