The Tipping Blog is a very interesting article giving a good explanation of how news items on the web suddenly find themselves popular in the extreme. John Hiler explains the steps he took to the identify Connectors and Mavens that found his story and brought it to widespread attention. John writes:
Understanding how Link Mavens and Connectors work transformed my thoughts of how ideas spread. You can literally see the process take place online in a way that is virtually impossible in real life. It’s generally a five-step process:
- An Expert (one might call her a Content Maven) Writes or Creates something interesting and puts it online (creating the critical component of any online ideavirus: the link)
- A Link Maven comes across the link, and blogs it to their site
- A Connector finds the link and blogs it to their site (or the aforementioned Link Maven has Connector-like traffic levels)
- The link starts to Tip within the weblog community
- The link Tips beyond the weblog community, as the rest of us find out about it.
A good introduction to a new phenomena.
