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The Tipping Point

  
  

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gravitybitch
05:43 / 19.06.02
The Law of the Few is very seductive, because it's so simple... I think there's got to be more to sucessful meme transmission; that getting to the Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen is necessary but not sufficient.

It's late and I'm tired so I'm going to miss some of the other obvious necessities... One is that the idea to be spread needs to have qualities beyond being "sticky" - I think it has to fulfill a perceived need or solve a perceived problem. (Anybody done a stint in marketing, know what sorts of techniques are used to create product demand?)

I'm guessing that I'm sort of a Maven, although with a limited scope. I'm support staff for most of what I get involved in - I help make things happen, fix problems... definitely not a salesman!
 
 
Fist of Fun
07:08 / 19.06.02
I don't think that the principles in the Tipping Point could be used for marketing, at least not for long.

First, you need a good product. Frankly, if you ain't got the product, you have a real difficulty getting the stickiness. And if you do have the product, standard methods of marketing will result in social awareness of it so that it will become known to mavens, via connectors, and then sold on by salesmen.

Secondly, if it isn't a good product, the mavens won't promote it. In fact, if it's a bad product, they'll positively demote it.

OK, yes, a bad product with good lies behind it could fake it for a while - but ultimatley it would get found out or replaced by a better product. And Tom, you are not allowed to use Microsoft and PC's versus Mac's as a counter example to this theory.

Thirdly, the power of context is going to mean that even with a good product (or, alternatively, a bad product with a good set of lies behind it) there is a limit to how much you can force the situation. Zero tolerance would not have worked in New York had it been implemented ten years earlier. (Interesting point there - Guiliani has recently advised against implementing it in London, and the Police Chief of NY in the 1980's (first black police chief, died recently, see the obits) implemented something very similar against 'lifestyle' crimes, which clearly did not work.)

BUT in as much as the principles can be used for revolutionary practices (whatever revolution and whichever side you support) they must also be usable for the powers of conservatism and the establishment. If anything, in order to use these principles deliberately you will need a vast amount of data on the population, and who is going to be the only group with that data? Yes, you guessed it, the establishment. And, of course, the Post Office if the latest attempt at invading our privacy comes back:
http://www.barbelith.com/underground/topic.php?id=7251
 
 
No star here laces
13:02 / 19.06.02
Well Fist of Fun, two points.

Firstly, the way this book is used in marketing is for research to be conducted to find out all about 'connectors' in a particular marketplace so that advertising can be designed to appeal specifically to them, and placed in locations (temporal and spatial) where they will encounter it. Thus saving manufacturers lots of money in that (in theory) they only need to shell out for enough advertising to reach the connectors, rather than paying to reach everyone.

As to the revolution vs conservatism point in the last paragraph, here you touch on a fatal flaw in the book's schema - if these processes are how information spreads anyway what earthly use is it for us to know that? Presumably fucking with the "natural" order of information transfer messes up the process itself, because who's to say that speaking directly to connectors without any intermediaries doesn't affect the way the information is transferred?
 
 
gravitybitch
14:39 / 19.06.02
Oooops... I didn't mean to get us bogged down in "consumer culture" so early on!

I'd like to drag the conversation back to Persephone's questions - is the Law of the Few a good model? Is it necessary? Sufficient? (The Evil Geniuses of Marketing have earned my undying skepticism, so I *will* want to dissect selling strategies later on.)
 
 
Persephone
03:11 / 20.06.02
By "necessary" you mean that you can't do it --i.e., get to the Tipping Point-- without the Few, and by "sufficient" you mean that you can do it with just them?

I am thinking about what Fist said and what Lyra said... how would you test either hypothesis, either through experimentation or through observation? I would say that Gladwell gives two relevant examples --one is Paul Revere's midnight ride, and the other is Stanley Milgram's six degrees of separation.

Presumably, Paul Revere already had two things going for him: a sticky message ("the British are coming!") and context (impending revolution). But it seems that Paul Revere himself was necessary, because there were two riders on that night. No one knows about the also-ran, because he got nothing like the response that Revere did. Because Paul Revere was a Connector, and William Dawes was not.

Second thoughts... Milgram's study probably doesn't show sufficiency, but it's interesting:

"Milgrim... got the names of 160 people who lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and mailed each of them a packet. In the packet was the name and address of a stockbroker who worked in Boston and lived in Sharon, Massachusetts. Each person was instructed to write his or her name on the packet and send it on to a friend or acquaintence who he or she would get the packet closer to the stockbroker.... The idea was that when the packet finally arrived at the stockbroker's house, Milgram could look at the list of all those whose hands it went through to get there."

And the results were 1) most of the letters reached the stockbroker in five or six steps, and 2) *half* of letters were ultimately delivered by just three people. I suppose this only shows that Connectors do exist, but not really that they can cause epidemics just out of the blue.

If I had a meme that I wanted to spread, I think I would place my bet on "necessary, not sufficient."

I also feel that I know almost for certain that Connectors exist, and Mavens and Salesmen with a lesser degree of certainty. For what it's worth, I finally figured out something about what grant et. al. were saying above about signal strength --i.e., the Few are amplifiers of different sorts. Connectors aid in the speed of transmission, because of their connections. Mavens lend power, based in their own credibility. And Salesmen are the ones manipulating desire, by way of their own charisma. Tom says above that "people who hear ideas from them are likely to remember them," but I think rather "likely to like them."

There's just so much to unpack here.

One last question for the evening, for Lyra: isn't understanding the "natural" process of how information spreads the first step in intervening with those processes? E.g., first one studies brain chemistry & then one starts up the pharmacopoeia?
 
 
YNH
06:33 / 20.06.02
Persephone, I meant it was an easy read that used few enough examples that they were easily remembered and that it didn't inspire a lot of note doodling or electronic highlighting. It was also a comment on where I read most of the book.

I would have preferred some/any follow-up examples supporting Milgram's "experiment." It's an attractive notion, but the fact is only a small number of the original 160 even responded, and apparently they barely rate compared to those crucial 3 folks. The reasons for this were not well explained.

The three types of people (rather, important people) also tend to resonate in both small and large ways with the reader's personal experience, allowing hir to interpellate people from hir own life into those roles as well as self-identify. I'm not absolutely certain things are so cut and dried, and again pitifully few examples are provided. On the other hand, it seems to inform a lot of advertising strategies; which lends some proxy support I suppose.

Does everyone think you actually need a good product for any of this to work? I mean, Nike's been selling T-shirts that fade and crack within a couple months for most of my life. I'd say that's a triumph of stickiness.

Regarding revolution, I'd say what's needed is good salespeople. Any of us could rattle off Mavens, and we're posting among some great connectors, but who makes the sale? And is that even a good, or appropriate, model for revolution? Oh, and there's the tricky bit of funding the revolution ad. Even if we found the salesfolk, how would we use them?

If I understand Lyra corrctly, I think ze means that intervening in the flow of information has the potential to alter the status of "the few" or simply interrupt and/or halt the process entirely; or that a good idea will succeed and a bad idea will ultimately fail regardless of intervention.
 
 
Persephone
11:47 / 20.06.02
Does everyone think you actually need a good product for any of this to work? I mean, Nike's been selling T-shirts that fade and crack within a couple months for most of my life. I'd say that's a triumph of stickiness.

Also in relation to what Fist wrote, there are plenty of examples of "better" products that failed --betamax vs. VHS, for example. I don't think that it's the case that the product has to be intrinsically good, as long are there are other reasons for people's wanting them. Marketers talk about the four Ps --product, price, place (distribution), and promotion. Any of the other Ps could practically trump product... e.g., I'd think that what makes Microsoft's operating system and software "sticky" is a matter of distribution more than anything else.
 
 
Fist of Fun
09:52 / 21.06.02
ynh I would have preferred some/any follow-up examples supporting Milgram's "experiment." It's an attractive notion, but the fact is only a small number of the original 160 even responded, and apparently they barely rate compared to those crucial 3 folks. The reasons for this were not well explained.

I believe that Milgram's experiment and the so called 'six degrees of separation' is being challenged at the moment. First off, his study used a group of people who were not properly chosen for statistical studies purposes - there were only 160, which can be sufficient to amount to a good 'statistical population' but is borderline, particularly with studies of a very large and potentially diverse population. Secondly, they were a reasonably socially homogenous group - overwhelmingly white (and remember, this was the 1960's) and with an average level of education. I remember reading an article in the Times in the last 6 months which suggested that if you study a group from the inner city, socially deprived populations the number of degrees increases enormously.

There are various studies going on at present which are attempting to replicate/improve the experiment. For example, the enviously well named SmallWorld Project:
http://smallworld.sociology.columbia.edu/

Persephone Also in relation to what Fist wrote, there are plenty of examples of "better" products that failed --betamax vs. VHS, for example. I don't think that it's the case that the product has to be intrinsically good, as long are there are other reasons for people's wanting them. Marketers talk about the four Ps --product, price, place (distribution), and promotion. Any of the other Ps could practically trump product... e.g., I'd think that what makes Microsoft's operating system and software "sticky" is a matter of distribution more than anything else.

I agree (Good Lord, am I allowed to say that on Barbelith?). Nike is constantly selling crap product (along with, undoubtedly, good products albeit with dodgy ethics) to my mind because of massive marketing, enormous existing brand presence in the market and huge distribution etc. VHS beat Beatamax for a variety of reasons, partially to do with VHS realising that rental videos (and, allegedly, porn) would power demand, partially to do with price, partially who knows?

All of this I have no problem with, and nor does the Tipping Point. What the book was about was how small things can result in big changes - the above are merely examples of big things having big results (the Betamax 'x' factor being a possible exception - but, hey, maybe it was a small thing having a big effect!)

One last point which interests me - what I call 'social science's uncertainty principle'. How does the very knowledge or discussion of these structures/systems change them? At the very least, does the attempt to use them change them? (OK, the latter is not quite what Heisenberg would see as an uncertainty principle, but you see what I mean.) Would the cool kids in downtown NY have purchased Hush Puppies if they knew they were deliberately being targeted? Would Paul Revere have had as much impact if people in 1776 had been as propaganda savvy as today's population? If this seems far fetched, just think about how the effectiveness of traditional forms of advertising has gone into free-fall in the past 20 years. Why? Because we are becoming mareketing and advertising cynics - hence advertisers increasingly bizarre attempts to woo us with unusual and unexpected stunts and alternative forms of advertising. Anybody notice Dr. Pepper in Spiderman? In 20 years that sort of image might actually turn you off the product, not on. And if marketers try to use the principles set out in the Tipping Point, could this affect their effectiveness?
 
 
Persephone
21:20 / 22.06.02
Smallworld is verrrry interesting, especially this brief history of the smallworld problem.

Synopsis for the lazy: the Milgram experiment is full of holes. Gladwell gets a yellow card --and yet, in a way he has turned himself into an example of ...um, something. What seems to be the most interesting thing about the Milgram experiment is not that it is true, but how readily people have accepted it as true. In other words, six degrees of separation is a sticky meme... but we don't really know yet whether it is a "good" meme, analogous to a good product. Same could be said for the tipping point meme, n'est-ce pas? So I think you see the same thing going on here with ideas as in the marketplace with products (if I may treat "ideas" and "products" as separate entities, which they are not really) --an idea or a product does not have to be good, or sound, to be sticky.

Why? What is that about? What does that mean?

From the paper:

A renaissance of scientific interest has occurred in the "small world problem" due to a mathematical demonstration of how random connectors in a network can create a small world. Psychological research is needed to examine the empirical realities and why people have strong emotional needs to believe we live in a small, small world.... The empirical focus of psychology and its attention to belief systems is especially needed given not only the renaissance of interest in the small world problem but also the disturbingly weak evidentiary basis of the idea that we are all connected by "six degrees of separation." The strength of popular belief that we live in a "small, small world" combined with the weakness of scientific evidence offers a fertile problem for the discipline.

And another:

One of the critical functions of social research is falsifying ideas we deeply wish to be true

What a fascinating statement! I am rather caught between whether this means a) proving or b) producing false ideas that we wish to be true...
 
 
gravitybitch
05:05 / 23.06.02
The "small world problem" reminds me of a conceit that an ex-roomie had - that there were only 1000 real people in the world, and that everybody else was from Central Casting (she did grow up in Anaheim, land of Mickey Mouse...) After living with me for a year, she revised the general theory - I obviously worked for Continuity rather than Central Casting.

A smaller world IS appealing - one of the reasons "six degrees" is so sticky. The human mind has a limit to the number of things it can hold simultaneously (somewhere between 5 and 12, 'though I don't remember the exact numbers or where I got the tidbit of info); six degrees of separation fits in this and makes the whole world accessible/manageable. I'd love to see the topology of the "mathematical demonstration of how random connectors in a network can create a small world" - this all somehow seems like emotional seven-league boots to make the world feel small enough to be "comprehensible" to apes that haven't evolved socially past bands of 30 or so (? arbitrary number that I just pulled out of thin air) individuals.

?sticky = something we need on an emotional level?
 
 
Fist of Fun
10:37 / 23.06.02
A smaller world IS appealing - one of the reasons "six degrees" is so sticky. The human mind has a limit to the number of things it can hold simultaneously (somewhere between 5 and 12, 'though I don't remember the exact numbers or where I got the tidbit of info); six degrees of separation fits in this and makes the whole world accessible/manageable. I'd love to see the topology of the "mathematical demonstration of how random connectors in a network can create a small world" - this all somehow seems like emotional seven-league boots to make the world feel small enough to be "comprehensible" to apes that haven't evolved socially past bands of 30 or so (? arbitrary number that I just pulled out of thin air) individuals.

Jesus, Iszabelle, if you haven't read Tipping Point you should, and then you should write your own version. You caught about 3 of the issues the book brought up, straight out of nowhere!

First off - there are a load of experiments which tend to suggest the human memory can deal best with up to 7 items on average. This is why telephone numbers were for ages limited to 7 digits, even though 10 would be far more obvious given our base 10 counting system and allow for far permutations. In fact, when BT wanted to change London numbers to deal with the boom in telecommunications in the early 90's, they originally wanted to simply shove an extra digit on the front but decided not to because of the difficulty with remembering 8-digit numbers (I was a temp there at the time - you wouldn't believe the arguments they had). Instead, they divided up into inner and outer London, thereby only doubling the numbers, and only in the past 2 years had the guts (and absolute necessity) to simply merge the two areas and shove an extra digit on anyway.

Secondly, on mathematical analysis of 'six degrees of separation' - this is SUPER interesting. Two Cornell mathmo's called Watts (student) and Strogatz (professor) did an analysis that showed that if you have just a few random connections in a population, amongst an otherwise entirely uniform structure, you can massively reduce connection times:

"The game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," in which actors can be connected to one another through their appearances in films with actor Kevin Bacon, works because Hollywood movies are a "small world," in mathematical terms. It's a world where actors are grouped into clusters -- the casts of each film -- and there are many interconnections among the clusters.
But two Cornell mathematicians have now shown that small worlds are probably common in many networks found in nature and are easy to create in systems as diverse as networks of people, power grids and the neurons in the human brain. All it takes is a few extra random connections.
"It's not just the world of people that's small," said Steven H. Strogatz, professor of theoretical and applied mechanics. "There's a unifying mechanism in nature that makes things small....

Watts and Strogatz graphed the changes in connectivity that occur as more and more connections are added to a regular network, until it becomes totally random. What they found, somewhat to their surprise, was that after just a few extra connections were made, it didn't much matter how many more were added. Just a few "shortcuts" brought everything closer together. They call these partly connected systems "small-world networks....
The researchers tested the idea by graphing three real-world networks, chosen because data on them was readily available: a list of film actors drawn from the Internet Movie Database, the western U.S. power grid and the network of neurons in the nematode worm C. elegans, the only creature whose neural network has been completely mapped. They found that all three were small-world networks in which you could get from any point to any other very quickly."

Interesting links:
The article the quote is from: http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/98/6.11.98/Strogatz.html
Another article: http://backissues.worldlink.co.uk/articles/250100180310/22.htm

Thirdly, you mention primate grouping sizes - I know that social group size is also mentioned in the book, although the figure is higher.
 
 
gravitybitch
15:29 / 23.06.02
(blushes) I should post under the influence more often!

I did read Tipping Point, probably about a year ago, and wanted to do a more in-depth reading. I was thrilled to see it come up in the Books section.

Thanks for the links!
 
  

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