Finding the sneezers
May 10th, 2004 by Jon Stahl
A several-decades study of word-of-mouth influence by Roper indicates that a few people have an especially high degree of influence over the conversations and word-of-mouth memes in their communities. Roper studies the sociology of influence in detail, and reaches out to the most influential people to learn their opinions. Now there are methods of using commercially-available marketing databases (think: Experion) to identify these especially influential people in large data sets. It would be fascinating to identify the most influential word-of-mouth people in, say, Ohio. Then we could compare our list to that of the Amway Republicans and the Smart mob Democrats–and see which system has involved more of the key folks in communities. (We could also, by the way, see how many of these folks are involved in the blogosphere.) No one has done this study yet, to my knowledge. It seems to me that it is a valuable study just waiting to happen.
Yes yes yes yes yes!!!!