The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell. An extremely good read on the power of word-of-mouth in spreading epidemics, be it brand, product, lifestyle, whatever. I finally finished reading this book. It took me awhile because of school and such.
I came upon a stunning idea during the last chapter. The power of the social network is growing ever more in our society. It is becoming the most valuable channel to which we can connect with people. It first began with phone lines. The telephone made communication the epitomy of ease in a time when it took a physical deliverer sometimes months to confirm a message. Telephony evolved into faxing evolved into sms evolved into cellular telephony and email.
Generally in a capitalistic economy value or price rises as quantity falls and vice versa. This is true with every product or service except the "network". In order for a telephone to have value it must be able to call another telephone. Same with faxes, sms, and emails. We need more and more receivers in order to build the network. As the network grows it becomes more and more valuable. Look at MySpace and Facebook and all of the other social networking platforms. The value in the market for each of these are well into the millions and billions of dollars. As the network grows it becomes more powerful, as corporations are often said to become more powerful with additions. However, one may difference between a giant corporation and a giant network [Although arguably they are one in the same only governed by different rule sets.] is that a giant corporation becomes increasingly unstable and difficult to be managed while the network, managed by its users, is completely stable.
Can multi-million dollar corporations learn from the stable network? Maybe but I highly doubt it. Can I learn from the success of the stable network? OF COURSE! In its inherent contradiction of value I give the network the most value. The network decides what is important and not important, relevant and irrelevant, what I can use and can’t use. Hmm… WHAT I CAN USE? An interesting concept. Let’s see here. First I can use mediums, i.e. video, words, audio, and graphics. That seems to encompass most mediums. I can use feedback and connections to spark conversation. Conversation… hmmm… This could be my tool, my paintbrush, my mouse-click, my pencil. Conversation can help me to outline what really matters to the rest of the world, and adapt my message to the content which is relevant. Now my content is relevant. How to spread it? Let’s go back to my mediums. What I am spreading determines my medium. Do people want to hear my message, see my message, or experience my message? I’ll leave it up to them to decide. I am here to provide and facilitate they are here to filter and facilitate. It’s a two way street. It’s the Main Street of information. The Main Street of the future. "Person to Person communications is much bigger than marketing. It is about making the world ours, again." –David Weinberger via Shel Israel
I know… long post. Lots of words. Thanks for reading though. I’ll try to include pics next time to liven things up a bit. –KP