Web 2.0, Tippy Market, and Tipping Point

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell, Back Bay Books (2002)
Check out the author's website for more interesting discussions.

This book was written well before the surge of web 2.0 but is often cited in web 2.0 related articles. It’s a page turner which examines sudden changes in many social issues: Why did teen suicide rate suddenly shoot up in Micronesia? Why did NY crime rate plummet? How did Hush Puppies become fashionable all of a sudden?

Malcolm thinks products, ideas, and messages can be contagious and spread like an epidemic. A tipping point, as he defines it, is that one dramatic moment when everything changes all at once. Three factors are involved in tipping an epidemic and Malcolm has plenty of case studies to explain each of them in detail.

Here’s a summary:

1. Law of the Few – the specially gifted messengers who spread the message
2. Stickiness Factor – the messages that stick to memory and move people to action
3. Power of Context – the right environment to operate in

Law of the Few
Malcolm lists 3 kinds of people who, in a social epidemic, can bring new ideas and new products from visionaries to the mainstream, explaining innovations in a way that’s acceptable and understandable by the mass.

Connectors occupy many different worlds and have a special gift of bringing them all together. They seem to know everyone in a small number of steps (degrees of separation).

Mavens are info experts who not only collect info but also eagerly share it (e.g. do you have friends who are car mavens?).

Salesmen persuade. Great salesmen have a special charm to draw people into their rhythms and dictate the terms of interaction.

Stickiness Factor
In this info age, nothing seems to stick due to a vast amount of info bombarding us on a daily basis. “Stickiness engineering” deals with this challenge through simple changes in presentation and structuring of the info. A sticky message moves people to action in an epidemic.

Another great resource on stickiness:
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by the Heath brothers.


Power of Context
Human behaviors are influenced by immediate circumstances in a way more than we are aware of. One famous example is the Good Samaritan test conducted by Darley and Batson of Princeton University in 1973. The theory also explains that, under the right circumstances, events can take a dramatic change, like how NY crime rate plummeted after subway graffiti was cleaned up.

Tipping point allows us to do less and achieve more. However, we can't simply do what we think is right and hope the best for the result; we need to test out our intuitions in a trial and error process.

How do you think web 2.0 is related to the tipping point theory?