The importance of hubs may have been overstated, say Kitsak and pals. “In contrast to common belief, the most influential spreaders in a social network do not correspond to the best connected people or to the most central people,” they say… [remainder elided]
Didn’t the Tipping Point already make this fact generally known? The fact that Mavens are influencers and Connectors are conduits?
— caterpillarcowboy
The fun of the quote is that it’s exactly the opposite of what gladwell wrote. The most connected people are whom he calls “connectors”, and this research demonstrates that being a connector isn’t important to spreading an idea. Neither are “mavens” important for their mavenness. Gladwell writes:
The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts
But this research suggests that the social gift that actually matters is the gift of being at the center of a subnetwork, a gift that Gladwell doesn’t discuss in his book at all. Rather, he discusses connectors and mavens, both of whom may be surprisingly irrelevant if this research is correct.
