You Are Six Steps Away From Bill Gates
Human Web which is also known as six degrees of separation, refers to the concept which says, a person in one part of the world is connected to another person in another part of the world at max six levels of connections. It means a person A from India can reach to a person B in USA in just six steps. This cogitation sounds impressive. Malcolm Gladwell explains this concept in his book, “The Tipping Point”. He says, “Six degrees of separation doesn’t mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few”. He further adds, “People who introduce us to our social circle – these people on whom we rely more heavily than we realize – are connectors, people with a special gift for bringing the world together”.
The word “Six Degrees of Separation” is associated with an experiment of Stanley Milgram. Milgram was a famous American social psychologist. When he was at Harvard, He conducted an experiment called “Small World Experiment”. This experiment was a combination of several small experiments of social networks across USA. Milgram’s experiment developed out of a desire to learn more about the probability that two randomly selected people would know each other. This was one way of looking at small world problem; other alternative view was to imagine the population as social network and try to find out the average path length between two nodes. Milgram’s experiment was designed to measure these path lengths by developing a procedure to count the number of ties between any two people.
There are many critiques of this experiment and there are several experiments done after this. Though, Milgram’s experiment still tops the list. When we see these experiments in the context of marketing we realize that connecting to people is not that though. We just need to learn few basics like –
How people are connected to each other?
Factors which influence people?
Who are connectors?
How to become a connector?
Difference between Marketer and Connector?
When we take these basic to social media we get few more question.
How Social Media operates?
How Social Media influences people?
Role of connectors in Social Media?
Social Media as a Marketing Tool?
I’ll try to touch each of these questions in my series of posts on Social Media & Connectors. Suggestions / Views / Comments are most welcome.
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Interesting post.’Connector’ sounds like one those intersections for criss-crossing wires.One of my friends is a connector, just didnt know it till I got to know about Malcolm Gladwell’s concept in your post. She is the connecting point between many of college friends – and there are many people I got back in touch with, through her. Looking forward to reading about intersections between connectors, social marketing and media. First off, I can think of Facebook with its numerous ads and ’causes’ and people aligning to those causes and inviting their friends to join. Keep writing.:-)
Very interesting article!
Thanks for sharing, please keep an update about this info. love to read it more. i like this site too much. Good theme ;).
can i see more of this please
I didn’t understand the concluding part of your article, could you please explain it more?
Thanks for sharing, please keep an update about this info. love to read it more. i like this site too much. Good theme ;).
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Saikat Sengupta, Nitesh Ambuj. Nitesh Ambuj said: You are just six steps away from Bill Gates . Little more about the concept of Human Web – http://tinyurl.com/ygfq59c […]
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Saikat Sengupta, Nitesh Ambuj. Nitesh Ambuj said: You are just six steps away from Bill Gates . Little more about the concept of Human Web – http://tinyurl.com/ygfq59c […]
Interesting post.’Connector’ sounds like one those intersections for criss-crossing wires.One of my friends is a connector, just didnt know it till I got to know about Malcolm Gladwell’s concept in your post. She is the connecting point between many of college friends – and there are many people I got back in touch with, through her. Looking forward to reading about intersections between connectors, social marketing and media. First off, I can think of Facebook with its numerous ads and ’causes’ and people aligning to those causes and inviting their friends to join. Keep writing.:-)
so how bout this example…. the person i am sitting next to in the bus is somebody i don know… now he ends up having a problem with the conductor n i help him solve it … now v get to know each other tat is the guy sitting near me…. so in this case is the conductor the connector….in the end it just works out like a probability..like i get to meet six out of my 25 classmates at school after i have passed out of school and i am now like say 45 years old. in one way or the other v meet the ppl v have to meet and tat dicides the path to where v are goin .