Interesting Twist from Yahoo! Labs on Social Media
I must be living in a cave. People pay Kim Kardashian $10,000 per tweet? What? Again, the rise of falsely famous eludes me. Once, we had to be talented to be famous. Then, finding a way to be really rich made you famous. Now, we're in the world of something else. I'll end my rant and get to the point. I read the Tipping Point and thought of it as insightful and possibly accurate. What's interesting is the thought crossed my mind that Malcolm Gladwell, at the end of the day, is a great journalistic author who has noticed these "trends", but has purported to testing them in any meaningful way. Yet, his book has shaped how marketers are monetizing social media. This Ad Age article, though, excerpts research from Yahoo! Labs. Here's an excerpt from the excerpt:
This makes sense, but using Kim Kardashian isn't a great baseline for someone who is well-connected. In Gladwell's book, he also talks about Mavens as those who are known and trusted to be experts in a certain area. When you get a tweet from Kim, who are you assuming she's getting her information from? If it's not a Maven, then you might not trust the information as reliable and see it more as pure entertainment. (In a sense, I'm agreeing with Watts' research.) What would be interesting would be seeing how her Twitter followers reacted to tweets of hers based on bona fide recommendations from Mavens in her network, rather than shameless bribes by advertisers paying her to leverage her "talent".
But in looking at influencers, Mr. Watts found that it's incredibly hard to predict who will be a major factor on Twitter, a conclusion that runs counter to the prevailing wisdom of social epidemics popularized by the book "The Tipping Point." While he acknowledges there are certain personalities such as Kim Kardashian who can potentially trigger a larger cascade of re-tweets given her large amount of "followers" ("Tipping Point" enthusiasts call her a connector), close studies of social platforms reveal that influence is spread more efficiently and more reliably when done through many-to-many connections, rather than through a few highly connected individuals.
This makes sense, but using Kim Kardashian isn't a great baseline for someone who is well-connected. In Gladwell's book, he also talks about Mavens as those who are known and trusted to be experts in a certain area. When you get a tweet from Kim, who are you assuming she's getting her information from? If it's not a Maven, then you might not trust the information as reliable and see it more as pure entertainment. (In a sense, I'm agreeing with Watts' research.) What would be interesting would be seeing how her Twitter followers reacted to tweets of hers based on bona fide recommendations from Mavens in her network, rather than shameless bribes by advertisers paying her to leverage her "talent".
