Are you an Accidental Influencer?

Here is an interesting news snippet I read today in Cool News about accidental influencers. Do you have any thoughts? SN



accidental influentials Duncan Watts is taking on Stanley Milgram, Malcolm Gladwell and the idea that small groups of high-influence individuals can use their six-degrees of separation to tip trends, reports Clive Thompson in Fast Company (Feb '08). Duncan is "a network-theory scientist" who "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 he's concluded that any attempt by marketers to create or drive a trend by focusing on "influentials" will not work. In fact, Duncan Watts thinks the very idea that marketers could put something over by focusing on a handful of influentials is lazy. "Think about it," he says. "You're saying, 'I am in control -- I am the biggest influencer because I am going to influence the influencers! It's an arrogance," says Duncan, "that only the corporate world could enjoy." To be clear, he "does agree that some people are more instrumental than others. He simply doesn't think it's possible to force a trend into existence by recruiting highly social people," and notes that if it were that easy to do, companies should be able manipulate trends, and consumer behavior, at will.As Duncan puts it: "If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one -- and if it isn't, then almost no one can." Instead, he argues that "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." Duncan has conducted experiments and built models that support his point of view, and predictably his methodologies have come under attack (when in doubt, attack the methodology). Ed Keller, author of "The Influentials," dismisses Duncan's models as "interesting," but too academic to be meaningful. You can read the entire article here. It's "interesting."