Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
31
 www.ideavirus.com
People Are More Connected Than They Ever Were Before. We Have
Dramatically More Friends Of Friends And We Can Connect With Them Faster
And More Frequently Than Ever.
Think back. Really far. Ten years ago.
How many people did you have regular telephone contact with ten years ago? Probably ten
or twenty or thirty in your personal life, and maybe 100 at work?
Now, take a look at your email inbox and your ICQ (the most popular instant messenger
program) buddy list. How many people do you hear from every week?
We’re far more connected than we ever were. And now, we’ve got second or third or fourth
order connections. There’s an email in my box from someone who is married to someone I
went to summer camp with twenty years ago who got my email address from a third friend.
Another message is from a former employee, telling me about a doctor who’s about to lose
his license for trying radical medical treatments, and how her mother-in-law will suffer if this
guy can’t practice any longer.
It’s hard for me to imagine either person contacting me if they had to walk across the village
and bang on the door of my hut or pick up the phone and call me. But the moment you
connect to the Internet, you connect, at some level, to all of us. And the connections make
ideas travel. Fast.
What’s the difference between word of mouth and an ideavirus? Two differences. First, word
of mouth tends to spread slower, be more analog. If you like a book, you might tell a friend
or two. And then your friends are unlikely to tell someone else until they read it for
themselves.
Second, word of mouth dies off. Because the numbers are smaller, it doesn’t take many
people who don’t participate in the word of mouth for each generation to be smaller than the
one before it.

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