Tipping Point? - The way social epidemics works!

The Tipping Point is a book by Malcolm Gladwell.

The book seeks to explain "social epidemics", or sudden and often chaotic changes from one state to another. For example, he cites the drop in the New York City crime rate in the 1990s. The ability to generate these epidemics is highly-sought in marketing. They are similar, in their mathematical properties, to disease epidemics.

Gladwell identifies three types of people who have the power to produce social epidemics:

Connectors: Those with wide social circles. They are the "hubs" of the human social network and responsible for the small world phenomenon.
Mavens are knowledgeable people. While most consumers wouldn't know if a product were priced above the market rate by, say, 10 percent, mavens would. Bloggers who detect false claims in the media could also be considered mavens.
Salesmen are charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills. They exert "soft" influence rather than forceful power. Their source of influence may be the tendency of others, subconsciously, to imitate them rather than techniques of conscious persuasion.

"What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

One of the things I'd like to do is to show people how to start "positive" epidemics of their own. The virtue of an epidemic, after all, is that just a little input is enough to get it started, and it can spread very, very quickly. That makes it something of obvious and enormous interest to everyone from educators trying to reach students, to businesses trying to spread the word about their product, or for that matter to anyone who's trying to create a change with limited resources. The book has a number of case studies of people who have successfully started epidemics--an advertising agency, for example, and a breast cancer activist. I think they are really fascinating. I also take a pressing social issue, teenage smoking, and break it down and analyze what an epidemic approach to solving that problem would look like. The point is that by the end of the book I think the reader will have a clear idea of what starting an epidemic actually takes. This is not an abstract, academic book. It's very practical. And it's very hopeful. It's brain software."

From Interview with Malcolm Gladwell.
"The Tipping Point - How Little Things Can Make a big Difference" - Malcom Gladwell
http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html