-The Mystery of How Things Getting Popular & Lessons learned from the book: “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.
"The tipping point" is a book written by GladWell, a famous New Yorker columnist, in around 2002. It gives some profound explanations on social epidemics. This is a popular book in the Web 2.0 community including Chinese Internet industry community. Here are some sum up in my own opinion about this interesting book.
In the beginning, Gladwell gave a brief description about the meaning of the term 'Tipping Point' : “The Tipping Point(引爆点) is that magic moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”[1]
To identify what makes a social epidemic and what makes a small stuff get popular, Gladwell pointed out three main factors in such an social phenomenon:
1.“What”: the Idea, Concept or Product itself;
2.“Who”: the People who transmit them;
3.“Where”: the Environment where those things spread and turn popular;
The main body of this book is telling the characteristics of these three factors in social epidemics.
Gladwell titled the people factor as "the Law of the Few"(个别人物法则). He said, before an idea, concept, or product can reach the tipping point, a few key types of people must champion/advocate it.
These few people can be divided into Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. Connectors are individuals who have ties in many different social networks. (Just as Hubs/Routers in Computer network) While Mavens(内行) are the information gatherers of the social network. They can be aware of tiny changes around. Finally, Salesmen are people who are extremely persuasive in inducing others’ buying decisions and behaviors.
An typical social epidemic works in this way: First, Mavens Find the Sensitive Information (Idea, Concept or Product) and Tell the Connector. Then, Connectors Transmit it to Massive People through his various social relationships. Finally, Salesmen Persuade People to Take Action. If all phases are successful, the Tipping Point is reached! Another thing he mentioned in his book is that Maven/Connectors/Salesman are just roles, one people may play multiple roles.
I think it's a reasonable explanation. Think about those people around you, they can be roughly divided into these three types. Let's study the case of Douban[2], an success web2.0 website in China.
Douban never do any massive media advertisement on TV station nor Radio station. But today it has millions of registered users, very active user created content and many people use it in their daily life(includes myself).
AhBei, the creator of Douban, is somewhat a book Maven, he likes reading books and sharing them with others. As a pioneer in web2.0 wave, he has some connections to those popular bloggers in China, such as Laobai and Keso etc. These popular bloggers act as Connectors - they have many friends and social activities in real world, and also they have many blog subscribers. They told other people about the Douban web site by means of talking with his friends or acquaintance in social party or meeting , and they can also do this by blogging.
As these people have big influence in public and have good reputation, blog subscribers or his acquaintance, who heard of Douban from him will try this website undoubtedly. So they also behaved in another role of Salesman.
Thus, many Internet users in China know this website, if this website itself has some basic factors that can attractive normal user and can get them stuck to this site, this web site reaches its tipping point and gets popular consequently.
We all know that, on Internet, in the time of web1.0, it's very easy for the user to leave for another similar service provider, it's nearly zero cost. So, to reach tipping point, to make a social epidemic, how to get those users stuck to your website in web2.0 time? What's the characteristics of those popular things themselves? What makes users get stuck to them and make them get popular?
[to be continue]
[1]http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/
[2]http://www.douban.com
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