Blog: The Tipping Point

I just started The Tipping Point. This book really should be subtitled "Everything Alpie is Interested In." In just the first few chapters it's basically given a blueprint for social software systems (it probably was a blueprint), divulged the secret to being popular, and tied together such topics of my interest as marketing and the urban renaissance.

This book has been out for four years already. Many of my friends have read it, and some have told me about it. In Gladwell's parlance, I've had Connectors (people who know a huge number of people) who have read it and Mavens (people who know a huge amount and tell others - in my case, the Maven who told me to read this years ago was Cindy Alvarez). But I never had any Salesmen tell me why I should read it.

It's about how little things can tip the balance. That's great. It's a terrific meme, and quite fascinating - but it also strikes me as intuitively true. What I knew of the book, I already thought I understood. But I happened to be in a bookstore one day which was featuring it somewhat prominently, and recalled that it was a book I ought to read; it still sat in my to-read pile for over a month. Nobody had made the case for the book to me. Whereas the previous book I read, Blinded By the Right, made it from "book I'd heard of and probably ought to read one day" onto my actual pile only when Jess suggested I read it with a convincing argument why.

(Ironically, it turned out that I enjoyed Blinded somewhat less than I thought I would, though it is still a great book; it's just that it did mostly cover material I already understood (like how the "vast right-wing conspiracy" was real), whereas The Tipping Point has already covered many more interesting topics in four chapters than I expected.)