The Podcaster - Small World Experiments

It is fascinating to look at the results of the Threshers Viral/Word-of-Mouth marketing campaign and the area of social media in the light of the ‘Small World’ experiments done by the social psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933 – 1984).

Milgram’s research into the ‘small world’ happened in the 1960’s when he gave 60 volunteers a letter with instructions to get it from Nebraska to a stockbroker living and working in Massachusetts. The only stipulation was that it had to be passed by hand. In the first experiment only 50 people participated and only 1 letter (5%) reached its destination. However later experiments resulted in up to 90%+ arriving.

From Milgram’s work we get the concept ‘Six degrees of Separation’. His observation was that it takes an average 6 steps to make a connection. Even in the 1960’s it only took a few days for the letter to travel across an America and arrive at the named person. Milgram’s and others research into the ‘small world’ concept showed ‘small groups’ and highly connected individuals acted as accelerators and ‘hubs’ in the process. Without doubt some ‘hubs’ are better connected than others.

40 years ago my Mum knew lots of people and seemed to me as a kid to be at the centre of village life – Women’s Institute, Youth Club, Guides, Church, Fetes. She had a little red address book and seemed to be always involved in some project or other. She spent a lot of time at meetings and coffee mornings and writing to people. We then got a phone but even then it was still labour intensive – one-to-one communications. In ‘small world’ terms she would have been a ‘hub’ I guess.

Fast forward to today. I have an address book with 40 or so names of family and friends. I have an Outlook address book with 300+ ‘business contacts’. I also have access to a company database with over 5k contact names. Within minutes I can contact them all. And they can contact me. Compared to many other people I am not a ‘full-hub’ – just a mini one. When a message hits a ‘full-hub’ it gets a massive push. Things can reach a critical mass quickly. This is what happened with Thresher’s. A few very well connected ‘full-hub’ people accelerated the viral marketing to another level and in a few weeks they had £15m of extra sales as mentioned in a news interview.

In his excellent book ‘The Tipping Point’ Malcolm Gladwell discusses Milgram and explains how this concept can be applied to many other situations.

I just wonder what my Mum would have done if she had had access today’s social media tools.

LinkedIn uses the principles of Milgrams work to create a business networking infrastructure. You can have some real fun seeing potential links.

So for example I am only three steps from Bill Gates. I know Dave Gurteen from our time together at Lotus. Dave knows Ray Ozzie from the time they both worked in the US on Lotus Notes and Ray now works for Bill Gates. Ray and I both were involved with Lotus Symphony but he worked in the US and I was based in Europe. In suppose in theory I can get hold of Bill using my connections. Guess what - thousands of others could do too and no - Ray and Bill don't send me Christmas cards!