The Tipping Point

(First of all: thanks, All Star, for inspiring this blog by posting the video on your Facebook page.)

You know how you sometimes hear about authors and books, and you read reviews of those books and you get the gist, but you never get around to reading the books?

Well, Malcolm Gladwell is one of those authors for me. I've heard about a few of his books, I know many people that have read those books, and I've even gone so far as to have (what I think are intelligent) conversations about the premises of the books.

But I have not read them.

The first book (proceeding in inverse chronological order, since the book I want to actually write about was his first one) is Outliers. About how and why some people succeed (well beyond average) while others never do. I take it to be a long-ass way of saying "practice makes perfect", but maybe that's just me.

The second book is Blink. It's about (again, I beg the blog reader to account for the fact that I have not read the book) how we, as humans, can make rapid, near-instant decisions based on our experiences and subconscious cues... which is not really a shock, except that he asserts these decisions are often correct. I don't know. Maybe. I'm not sure I buy it.

The third book (which is the first one he wrote, as far as I know) is The Tipping Point. Let me go into some detail about what I think (as an ignorant non-reader of the book) the scoop is. And then I want to present a video and a graph that kind of show a real-world example.

The Tipping Point essentially looks at large things--popular products, memes, societal habits--and examines how they start. Lots of people smoke cigarettes... but why did it catch on? Denim is blue, but why? Boxxy was popular for about 20 days in certain online circles... why?

It's not always about the best idea or the catchiest tune or the most fun experience. Sometimes things reach critical mass and sometimes they don't. I'm sure Gladwell goes into significant anecdotal detail about Connectors and Stickiness and whatever, but it all adds up to the thing (band, or TV show, or invention) being in the right place in the right time... conditions matter.

Also sometimes something reaches critical mass and it adds value to those who buy into it. Facebook and MySpace are perfect examples... without any of my friends on Facebook, I rarely used it, but I was on MySpace constantly. Once a migration started (by whom? I don't know... why? I don't know), I went along with the herd and enjoy Facebook now much more... even though I prefer MySpace for a variety of reasons.

So watch this video. It's three minutes and six seconds, which I know is an eternity in the Interwebz age, but I think it illustrates the idea contained in the Tipping Point and upon which successful social networking sites like Facebook relies.

For those of you too lazy to watch the video, I took the liberty of making a graph with an approximation of the same data you can get by watching the vid (although without the cool music and dance moves).

So... let's look at that in graph form (I lost track of the number of dancers at some point and approximated with a constantly increasing delta).

Basically, things started REALLY slowly... the first guy danced by himself for about 20 seconds (at least 20 seconds of video; maybe he'd been dancing with himself for 10 minutes before it started). It took 30 seconds for the third guy to arrive. 

Within 15 seconds of the third guy dancing, three more people had arrived. More joined constantly for the remaining two minutes... seemingly snowballing as more and more people wanted in on the fun.

There are a lot of imperfections with the data I observed, including a presumed lag time between when people decided to participate and when they arrived at the dance party. It demonstrates, though, that one guy kept dancing long enough to get it to catch on.

Why? Maybe the first guy was buddies with some other people, although I would guess that the second fella established with HIS friends that joining in would be cool. Once the ice had been broken, it was easier for the third and, eventually, the 50th and 100th and 200th person to join in.

The music helped. People had become accustomed to the song and it help make them more comfortable dancing to it. The energy level towards the end seems to go down when the music stops, although people are still arriving (the "lag imperfection", mentioned above, perhaps).

The booze helped. I'm no expert on Sasquatch or music festivals generally, but I would bet that alcohol had been consumed and (along with the sunshine) it put people in a, well, festive mood.

How can this be applied to real life? How can perfect conditions be replicated so that ideas and goods become viral/popular/accepted?

I don't know. I haven't read the book.