

Duncan Watts vs. Malcolm Gladwell:  Mathematician turned sociologist challenges "Tipping Point" idea. - fiaz
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/122/is-the-tipping-point-toast.html?page=0%2C0

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redorb
I think it greatly depends on the market rather or not influencer's have an
impact. The average person isn't buying toothpaste becuase someone famous is,
but they do drive escalades and hummers because they saw it done by
"influencer's"

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jamesbritt
"The average person isn't buying toothpaste becuase someone famous is, but
they do drive escalades and hummers because they saw it done by
"influencer's"''

I think Watts' point is that the influencers are not part of some special core
sect of mavens and connectors, but simply people within one or another social
sphere who, for whatever reason, happen to get attention. It's more random
that Gladwell suggests.

(I tried reading the book, but just didn't have the attention span and it went
back to the library before I finished it. I think I skim-read about half of
it.)

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Kaizyn
Watts book Six Degrees is pretty interesting to read. There's a lot of good
material in it that will leave you with lots to think about. It's a bit dense
in places and could have used a better ordering of the materials, but I'd
still recommend the book.

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dusklight
One thing Watts does not account for in his simulation ... in real life,
influentials are disproportionately likely to be connected to other
influentials.

And just empirically we can see the influentials do have an effect. No one can
really deny the power of celebrity endorsements. Now what can be questioned,
though, is just how many connections do you need before you can be considered
an influential, and what magnitude is their influence? From Watt's experiment
we can probably conclude that 40 is not enough to do a lot.

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codewhisperer
Bit of an ego blow to those styling themselves as "influentials."

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jamesbritt
'Bit of an ego blow to those styling themselves as "influentials."'

I wonder if Galdwell's conjecture gained traction because, deep down, most
people really like to believe that some people are simply special.

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gruseom
Watts' claim that trend-spreading data doesn't show the influentials pattern
certainly seems plausible. The article places naive emphasis on his models,
but those can be tweaked any which way. The really impressive finding is his
repeat of Milgram's degrees-of-separation experiment.

I was going to add the music-ranking experiment to this list, but on second
thought that one (while interesting) doesn't address the influentials theory
at all.

