Do tastemakers really matter?
Keeping with the tastemaker theme for the day, be sure to read Steve Krause's post: Is Predicting Hit Songs Futile?
Steve
has been looking at the recent Duncan Watt's study on how social memes
such as 'hits' spread through social networks. Watts says that it
is not tastemakers that influence how fast a new song spreads, it is how
susceptible the audience is to a new idea.
The principal requirement for what we call "global cascades"—the widespread propagation of influence through networks—is the presence not of a few influentials but, rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people, each of whom adopts, say, a look or a brand after being exposed to a single adopting neighbor.