I recently finished reading your book “flock and flow”. On it you seem to agree with the idea that there are some people that are more important in the diffusion (Influencers?).
If the theory of Duncan Watts prove to be true or at least partially true, how it affects what you propose on the book

On the subject of the “90/9/1 rule ” a friend of mine has an interesting theory which he calls “Behavior Generated Content”, which he has developed through his work for Joost.

“Its content generated by people’s actions not by them actively creating anything. Content generated by activity. A good example is Facebook who create 100 of hours of storytelling by allowing friends of friends to read what they have “done”. (newsfeed)”

See more:
http://blog.hellohenrik.com/?p=268

clay shirky was an interesting ‘random’ pick of example

the mechanistic model of marketing has in my experience very little to offer in my experience of planning in/for (apologies for lack of a better term) web 2.0

the question of how to support self organising movements (along with several other themes such as new social currencies/barter, the ‘gaming’ forms of interaction, and how people learn to adopt new habits) is far more prescient, it just comes up again, and again, and again

and you are absolutely right that anthropology is absolutely key to all of that

i actually cant remember the last time (outside climate change science where ‘tipping elements’ are the current hot topic) when someone quoted tipping points to me, or where that way of thinking felt relevant

which is something of a relief
(i never read that book because – like freakonomics – i mistrusted it in all sorts of levels, plus yes probably professional jealousy)

if you look at the academic movement which he appropriated (mimetics) it does seem to a have proved a dead end too, failing to generate any new knowledge beyond a clever perspective or way of re-explaining

the difficult thing for marketers today is to learn systems thinking, the tipping point was the latest attempt to re-assert a newtonian, classical sender-receiver-message (or perhaps more accurately budget – idea – rationale -sales) model, where with enough money and the right agency you could sell snow to eskimos (mind you, on current rates of north pole ice melting…?)

anyway, it’s a great debate, i’m sure there’s lots more where this came from

:J

These 90%, (and this is me talking off the top of my head) probably see and experience it as network of knowing. Hell, I’m so friggin’ busy writing for clients that I seldom have time to contribute much. I’m one of them, and I really see it as a joint knowing (most of the time). I love consuming the brilliant ideas that blogs like this pump out but I happen to be a pen and paper guy still, and short on time. To me it’s an amazing joint knowing (thanks to the small number of joint doing:ers…). My point is that I agree with you that the power of the medium is joint doing but as marketers we have to realize that it is that for a small number of total.

a couple of things come to my mind (as I take a break from the Wire and read your blog). firsty your judgement of mechanics. they do exist, mechanisms, and they can and perhaps should be used by marketeers. no bad thing in that. Kahneman and Cialdini and Mark Earls have shown us (or me) that machanics are a powerfull tool. humans do tend to be social, listen to others and act as others.

the implication of watts means nothing . it is merely a reminder of what Bernbach has said many years ago: “I warn you against believing that advertising is a science.” good news told well about a good thing will always travel well.

I have no trouble being told/going along with a beautifull lie, meme, hype (or brandmessage), in fact they can be a source of entertainment, I do have a problem with being told sloppy, boring lies.

Barnum told lies, looked at and exploited shortcuts, as did Victor Lustig (he sold the Eiffel tower!!!). I doubt anybody felt duped after they found out he uses tricks to do what he did…I bet they laughed their heads off.

I seem to be drifting of topic abit, so let me say this…I kinda feel sad to read yet another reminder of knowlegde that has been available to the marketing community for a lot of years…. but I guess the hardheaded got to feel it to believe it(mosdef)

and with that I am off to West Baltimore again…..(it’s election time)

You have often talked about customer construction of marketing meaning, and it is this activity — jointly undertaken by all the stakeholders in the marketplace, achieving their results incrementally and thus only ever provisionally — that marketers need to understand and influence in a social networking context. Most of us marketers are nowhere near understanding it, or even recognizing that we should. We are still focused on spreading awareness of static knowledge, instead of exploring how we might enable joint execution of dynamic action.