
First Follower idea is all yours - jackchristopher
http://sivers.org/ff2
======
swombat
As posted on Sivers' blog:

Yes, indeed, it is ours - I first heard it back in June 2009, on Seth Godin's
blog. It got posted up on Hacker News too.

Here's the seth post of the same video, making the same post (though he
reckons guy #3 is more important than the first follower):

<http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/guy-3.html>

~~~
sivers
Just to be fair: Seth is a friend and I told him about it before he posted
about it.

I posted about it on June 6: <http://sivers.org/dance-lessons>

Seth posted on June 10:
<http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/guy-3.html>

Not being competitive. Just making it clear I wasn't copying Seth's idea.

~~~
swombat
Interesting! I wasn't aware of your previous post. Thanks for clarifying.

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silvio
I think Sivers is trying to prove the point that his idea will only become a
movement after the first follower joins him. Tricky.

~~~
sivers
I'm not that subtle, no. It's really as-is.

So many people telling me the idea should be developed into a book, but I
don't want to, so I was just letting it publicly be known that the idea is up
for grabs.

Hoping to encourage someone who wants to run with it, knowing I won't compete.

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ww520
I saw the dancing video before and it was hilarious, though that guy was
dancing for a loonnng time before the first follower came along, and there
were people came in on and off in between. He had to struggle for a while
before it became a movement. But the First Follower idea is very insightful.

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Tichy
I think it is actually quite old. Seth Godin or somebody like that might have
blogged about the dancing guy about a year ago? So definitely to late to
become the "First Follower Guy".

OK not too late - but where is the fun in taking somebodies meme?

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alecco
You can see that right here. First few votes make a submission die or get to
the front page. And then it's just momentum.

IMHO, this is detrimental to quality and doesn't fend off bandwagon bias.

~~~
jackchristopher
I was surprised at how fast the article came up, even with Sivers being HN
gold. But I submitted it because I wanted to see how HN would expand on the
topic of leading and following.

~~~
alecco
Oh, I mean HN in general, not this particular submission. I'm even subscribed
to Siver's feed. =)

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forsaken
It will be interesting how this maps to Open Source. Github has "followers"
explicitly. In open source, is the "first contributer" more important? Lots of
interesting intersections..

~~~
skybrian
Absolutely! There are lots of one-person projects on Github; I have a few of
my own. They already do what I want, but could be expanded to be useful to
more people. Anyone who wants to dive in could make a big difference.

The tricky bit is that I'm not really looking for one-person open source
projects to contribute to, so how would I ever notice them? It seems like
there's an opportunity here.

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gcheong
You mean be a leader of the first follower movement?

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ThomPete
It's a good story, Seth posted about it too a while back.

The problem like with Gladwell's "Tipping Point" and "Blink" is that they
sound actionable but aren't really.

