(#1 _NavroNar BEsTsereen The TIPPING POINT How Littl@Things Can Make a Bi@Difference MALCOLM GLADWELL From the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia: discover Malcolm Gladwell’s breakthrough. debut and explore the science behind viral trends in business, marketing, and human behavior. The ‘tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the fiu, so toocan a ‘small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion ‘trend, the popularity of a new product, ora drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the ‘world think about selling products and disseminating ideas. “A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person. Jooks at the world.” —Michael LewisContents Cover Title Page Welcome Dedication Introduction ove: The Three Rules of Epidemics Wo: The Law of the Few THREE: The Stickiness Factor FOUR: The Power of Context (Part One) Eve: The Power of Context (Part Two), Case Stu: SEVEN: Case Study, EIGHT: Conclusion Afterword Acknowledgments Discover More About the Author Books Malcolm Gladwell Acclaim for Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point Reading Group Guide EndnotesIntroduction For tiash Puppies—the classic American brushed suede shoes with the lightweight erepe sole—the Tipping Point came somewhere between late 1994 and early 1995. The brand had been all but dead until that point, Sales were down to 30,000 pairs a year, mostly to backwoods outlets and small town family stores, Wolverine, the company that makes Hush Puppies, was, thinking of phasing out the shoes that made them famous. But then something strange happened. Ata fashion shoot, two Hush. Puppies executives —Owen Baxter and Geoffiey Lewis—ran into a stylist from New York who told them that the classic Hush Puppies had suddenly become hip in the clubs and bars of, downtown Manhattan. “We were being told,” Baxter recalls, “that there were resale shops in the Village, in Soho, where the shoes were being sold, People were going to the Ma and Pa stores, the litle stores that still carried them, and buying them up.” Baxter and Lewis were baflled at first. It made no sense to them that shoes that were so obviously out of fashion couldmake a comeback, “We were told that Isaac Mizrahi was sworn the shoes himself” Lewis says. “I thnk it's fair to say ‘that athe time we had no idea who Tsaae Miarabi was." By the fall of 1995, things began to happen in a mosh, First the designer John Bavtlett called. He wanted to use Hush Poppies in his spring collection. Then avother Manhattan designer, Anna Sui, called, wanting shoes for her show as wll. Ia Los Angeles the designer Yoel Fitzgerald put a owenty five foot inflatable ‘basset houind—the symbol ofthe Hush Puppies brandon the roof of his Hollywood store and gutted an adjoining ar gallery to turn it into a Hush Puppies boutique. While he was still, painting and putting up shelves, the actor Pee wee Herman ‘walked in and asked for a couple of pairs. “Tt was total word of mouth,” Fitgerald remembers, 11995, the company sold 430,000 pairs of the clasie Hush Puppies, and the next year it sold four times that, and the year after thot stil more, util Hush Puppias were once again a staple of the wardrobe of the young American male. In 1996, Hush Puppies won the prize for best accessory atthe Council of Fashioa Designers awards dinner at Lincola Ceater, and the president ofthe firm stoos up on the stage with Calvin Klein and Donna Karan and accepted an award for an achievement that— 5 he would be the first ro admit—his eompauy had almost ‘thing to do with, Hush Puppies had suddenly exploded, and it all stared with a handfol of kid inthe East Village and Soko, How did that happen? Those first few kids, whoever they e,weren't deliberately trying te promote Hush Puppies. They ‘were wearing them precicaly because no one elze would wear thom. Thea the fad spread to two fashion designers who sed the shoes to peddle something else—havte couture. The shoes were tan incidental touch, No one was trying to make Hush Puppies 2 wend, Yet, somehow, that’s exactly what happened. The shoes passed a certain point in popularity and they tipped. How does a thisty-dollar pair of shoes go ftom a handful of downtown, ‘Manlttan hipsters and designers to every mall in America inthe pace oft yenes? L ‘Tere was a time, not very long ago, in the desperately poor ‘New York City neighborhoods of Brownzville and East New ‘York, when th streets would tar ito ghost towns at dusk. Ordinary working people wouldn't walk on the sidewalks Children would ride their bicycles on the street. Old fle ‘woulda’ sit on stoops and park benches. The drug trade ran so sempaat and gang warfare was so wbiguitows ia that part of Brooklyn that most people would take to the safety ofthele apartment at nightfall, Police officers who served in Brownsville inthe 1980s and early 1990s say that, in those years, as soon as the sun went down ther radios exploded with chatter berween beat officers and their diepatchers aver every conceivable kind of violeat and dangerous ct. Ia 1992, these wers 2.154 snunders in New York City and 626,182 serious erimes, with the ‘weight of those crimes falling hardest in places like Brownsville sand East New York. But then something strange happened. At some mysterious and critical point, the crime mate began to turn. It ped. Within five years, murders had dropped 64.3 percent 10 770 and total crimes had fallen by almost half to 355,893. InBrownsville and East New York, the sidewalk filled up again, the bieyelas came back, and old folks reappeared on the stoops “There Was a time when it wasn’t uacommoa te heat rapid fire, like you would hear somewhere inthe jungle in Vietnam,” says Inspector Edward Messadei, who commands the police precinct in Brownsville, “T doa’t hear the guafite anymore." ‘The New York City police will tell you tha what happened in Now York wa thatthe city’s poling strategies dramatically improved. Criminologists point to the decline ofthe crack trade ane the aging ofthe population. Economists, meanwhile, say ‘that the gradual improvement inthe city’s economy over the couse of the 1990s had the effect of employing those who might otherwise have become criminals. These are the conventional ‘explanations forthe rise and fall of social problemas, but in the ‘end none is any more satisfying than the statement that kid in the East Village caused the Hush Puppies revival. The changes in the drug trade, the population, and the economy ae all ong: ‘term trends, happeoing allover the couatry. They don’t explain ‘why crime plunged in New York City so much more than in bother cites aod the country, aad they don’t explain why it all ‘happened in such an extraordinarily shor ttne, As forthe improvements made by the poive, they are important too. But ‘hove isa puzzling gap between ths eoale ofthe changes in policing and the size ofthe effect on places like Brownsville and East New York. Afterall, crime dida’t just slowly ebb in New ‘York as conditions gradually improved. It plummeted. How can 4 change in a handful of economic and social indies cause murder rates fo fall by two-thirds in five years? The Tipping Point isthe biography of an idea, and the idea is ‘very simple. It is thatthe best way to understand the emergence of fashion tends, the ebb and flow of rime waves, of, fo that matter, the transformation of unknowa books inte bestsellers, or the ree of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of ward of mouth, or aay number ofthe other mysterious changes that mark everyday lf isto think of them ae epidemic Idens aad products and messages and behaviors spread just like vires do. ‘The sie of Hush Poppies aud the fall of New York's exime sate are textbook examples of epidemies in action, Although they may sovad a2 if they doa’t have very mul in common, they share basic, underlying pattern, Fist of al, they are clear examples of contagious behavior, No one took ovt a advertisement and tld people that the traditional Huch Puppies ‘were cool and they should start wearing them. Those kids simply ‘wore the shoes when they went to clubs oreafes or walked the streets of dowatown New York, aad in o doing exposed other ‘people to their fashion sence. They infected them with the Hush Puppies “vir.” The crime decline ia New Vork surely happened the sane ‘way. It wasn’t that some huge percentage of would-be murderers suddealy sat up in 1998 ad decided nor to commit any more crimes. Nor was it that the police managed magically to intervene in a huge percentage of sitwations that would otherwice have tumed deadly: What happened i that the small number of ‘people in the emll umber of eitvatiou ia which the police oF ‘the new social frees had some impact starred behaving very diffeceuly, and that bebavior somehow spread to other would-becriminals in similar situations. Somehow a large number of people in New York gor “infected” with an anti-crime wizus in a short time, ‘The second distinguishing characteristic ofthese two examples i that in both cases litle changes had big effets. All ofthe possible reasons for why New York's crime rate dropped are changes that happened at the margin: they were incremental clsanges. The crack trade leveled off. The population got a ils older. The police force got a litle better. Vet the effect was dramatic, So too with Hush Poppies. How many kids are we talking about who began wearing the shoes in downtown Manhattan? Tweaty? Fifty? One bundzed—at the most? Yet thelr actions seem to have single-handedly started an international fashion wend Finally, both changes happened ina hurry, They did't build steadily and slowly. I is iastrctive to look ata chart of the crime cate in New York City fom, say, the mid-1960s tothe late 1990s. I Jooke le 8 giant exch. Ia 1965, there were 200,000 crimes in the city and from that point oa the number begins a sharp rise, doubling in two years and coatinuing almost ‘unbroken until this 650,000 crimes a year in the mid-1970s. 1 stays steady at that level for the next rwo decades, before plunging downward in 1992 as sharply as it rose titty years neler. Crime did not taper off. It didn't gently decelerate. It hit 8 certain point and jammed on the brakes, ‘These three characteristcs—one, contagiousness: wo, the fact that litle causes ean have big effects: an three, that change happens aot gradvally but at one dramatic moment —are the same three principles that define how measles moves through a _rade-school classroom or the fiv attacks every winter. OF the ‘three the third trat—the idea that epidemies can rise or fall in ‘one dramatic moment—is the most important, because itis the principle that makes sense ofthe fist two and that permits the ‘reatestinsiaht into why modern change happens the Way it docs. The name given to that oae dramatic moment ia an chidemie when everything caa change all at oace isthe Tipping Point. 3 ‘A world that follows the rules of epidemics is very diferent place from the world we think we live in now. Think, fora ‘moment, about the concept of coutagiousaess. IF say that word 1t0-you, you think of colds aud the flu or pethaps something very dangerous like HIV or Ebola. We have, in our minds, avery specifi, biological notion of what coutagiousness means. But if there ean be epidemics of erime ot epidemics of fashion, there ust be all kinds of things just as contagious as viruses. Have ‘you ever thought about yawning, for instance? Yawning isa Surprisingly powerfl act, Just because you ead the word “yawning” in the previous two sentenees—and the 160 daitional “yawns” in thie seatence—a good number of you will probably yawn within the next few minutes. Even as Pa waiting this, 've yawned twice, Ifyou're reading this in a public place, and you've just yawned, chances are that a good proportion of ‘everyone who saw you yawn is now yawning too, and a good proportion ofthe people watching the people who watched youyaw are now yawning as well, and on and on, in an ever: ‘widening, yawning cece, ‘Yawning i incredibly contagious. I made some of you ‘reading this yawn simply by writing the word “yawwa," The people who yawned when they saw you yawn, meaawhile, were infected by the sight of you yawning—which isa second kind of contagion, They might even have vawaed if hey oaly beard you yawn, because yawning is also aurally contagious: if you play an audiotape ofa yaw to blind people, they'll yawn too. And finally, if you yawned as you read this, did the thought cross ‘your mind however unconseiouly and flectingly—that you might be tired? I suspect that for some of you it did, whieh means that yawns can also be emotionally contagious. Simply by ‘writiag the word, Lean plaat a feeling ia your mind, Ca the fy vis do that? Contagiousnes, in other words, i an unexpected property ofall kinds of things, and we have to remember that, if ‘we are fo recognize and diagnose epidemic change. “The second of the principles of epicemios—that litle changes can somehow have big effects—is also a fairly radical notion, We are as humans, heavily socialized to make a kind of rough approximation between cance and effect, IF we want to comminicate a song emotion, if we want ro convince someone ‘that, say, we love ther, sve realize that we need to speak passionately and forhriebly. If we want to break bad news to someone, we lower aur voiees and choose our words carefully. We are trad to thik that what goes into any transaction or ‘lationship or system must be dizetly related, ia intensity and dimension, to what comes eut. Consider, for example, the following puzzle. I give you a large piece of paper, and I ask you, to fold it over once, aud then take that folded paper and fold it cover again, and then again, and again, uot you have refolded ‘the original paper SO times. How tall do you think the final stack, is goiug to be? In answer to that question, most people will fold the sheet in their mind’s eye, and guess thatthe pile would be as thick asa phone book or, if they're rally courageous, they'll say ‘that it would be as tall as refrigerator. But the real answer is thatthe height ofthe stack would approximate the distance ta the sun. And if you folded it over one more time, the stack would be ‘as high asthe distance tothe sun ané back. Ths isan example of ‘what in mathematics is called 2 geometric progression. Epidemics are another example of geometri progression: when vin spreads through a population, it doubles and doubles ‘again, uatl it has (figuratively) growa from a single sheet of ‘paper all the way to the sun in fifty steps. As human beings we have a hard time with this kind of progression, because the end esulttheeffeet—seems far out of proportion tothe cause. To appreciate the power of episemics, we have to abandon thie ‘expectation about proportionality. We need to prepare ourselves forthe possibility that sometimes big changes follow from small ‘events, and that sometimes these changes can happen very avickly. ‘This possibility of sudden change is atthe center ofthe idea of the Tipping Polat and might well be the hardest ofa accept. The expression fist came into popular use inthe 1970s to describe the flight to the suburbs of whites living inthe older cities of the American Northeast, When the aumber of incoming ‘Aftican Americane in a particular asighborhood reached a certain point—20 percent, say-—sociologists observed thatthecommunity would “tip”: most ofthe remaining whites would leave almost immediately. The Tipping Poiat isthe moment of| critieal mass, the threshold, the boiling point. There was a ‘Tipping Point for violet crime in New York ia the early 1990s, and a Tipping Point for te reemergence of Hush Puppies, just as there is 8 Tipping Point for the introduction of aay new technology: Sharp introduced the fist low-priced fas machine in 1984, and sold about 80,000 of those machines inthe United States in that fist year For the next tree years, businesses slowly and steadily bought more and more faxes, anil, ia 1987, ‘enough people had faxes that it made sense for everyone to get a ax, Niaetoea cighty-ceven was the fax machine Tipping Point. A ‘million machines were sold that year, and by 1989 160 million ‘new machines had gone into operation. Cellular phones have followed the some trajectory, Through the 1990s, they got smaller and cheaper, and service got better until 1998, when the technology hit a Tipping Point and suddeaty everyone had a cell phone, (For an explanation ofthe mathematics of Tipping Points, see the Endnotes.) All epidemics have Tipping Points. Jonathan Crane, a sociologist atthe University of Minis, has looked atthe effect the number of role models in # community—the professionals, ‘managers teachors whom the Census Bureau has defined as igh status"—has on the lives of teenagers in the same neighborhood. He found litle difference in pregnancy rates of sehool drop-out rates in neighborhoods of between 40 and 5 percent of high-status workers. But when the number of professionals dropped blow 5 percent, the problem exploded) For black schoolchildren, for example, as the percentage of high- status workers falls just 2.2 percentage points—from 56 percent 10 3.4 peroent—diop out rates mors than double. At the same ‘Tipping Point, the mes of childbearing for teenaged gicls— ‘which barely move at all upto that point—aeasly double, We assume, intuitively, that neighborhoods and social problems decline in some kind of steady progression. But sometimes they ‘may not decline steadily at all; at the Tipping Point, sehools ean loce contol of their students, and family life caa disintegrate all remember once asa child seeing our family’s puppy ‘encounter snow for the first time. He was shocked and delighted an overwhelmed, wagging his tail nervously, sniffing about in this strange, flufly substance, whimpering with the mystery of it all. It wasa’t seh coléer oa the morning of his first caowtall than it had been the evening before. It might have been 34 degrees the previous evening, and now it was 31 dearees. Almost nothing had changed, in other words, yet—and this was the amazing thing—everything had changed, Rain had become comething entirely different, Snow! We are all, at heat, aradualst, our expectations set by the steady passage of time ‘But the world ofthe Tipping Point isa place where the ‘unexpected becomes expected, where radical change is more thaa possibility. I is—contrary to all our expsctations—a certainty. In pursuit ofthis radical idea, Pm going o take you to Baltimore, to lam from the epidemic of syphilis in that ity. Pm Boing to introduce three fascinating kinds of people Ica ‘Mavens, Connsctors, and Salesmen, who playa critical role in the word-of-mouth epidemics that dictate our tastes and treadsand fashions. I'l take you to the set ofthe children’s shows Sesame Steet and Blue's Clues and into the fascinating world of the man who helped to ereate the Columbia Record Club t0 look, at how messages can be stractured to have the maximum possible impact om all their audience, Pll tke you toa high-tech ‘company in Delaware to talk about the Tipping Points that _govera aroup life and tothe subways of New York City to ‘understand how the erime epidemic was brought to an end there ‘The point of all of ths is to answer two simple questions that lie atthe heart of what we would all lke to accomplish a: ‘educators, parents, marketers, business people, and policymakers, Why i it that some ideas or behaviors or products start epidemics and others don’®? And what can we da to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own? ONE The Three Rules of Epidemics Ta tue nid-1990., the city of Baltimore was atacked by an epidemic of syphilis. Inthe space of a year, from 1995 t0 1996, the aumber of children bora wit the disease inereased by 500 percent Ifyou look at Baltimore's syphilis rates ona graph the line suns tsiaht for years and then, whon it its 1995, cisse almost at right angle. What caused Baltimore's sypilis problem to tp? According to the Centers for Disease Control, the problem was crack cocaine. Crack is kuown to cause a dramatic increase inthe kind of isk sexual bebavior that leads othe spread of things like HIV and syphilis. t brings far more people inte poor areas to buy drugs, whieh then inereses the likelihood that they will take an infection home with them other own neighborhood. It changes the patterns of socal connections between usighborhoods. Crack, the CDC said, was the litle push thatthe syphilis problem needed 1o tur ito a aging epidemic John Zenilman of Fohns Hopkins University in Baltimore, an expert on sexually transite diseases, has another explanationthe breaksowa of medical services in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, “In 1990-91, we had thirty-six thousand patient ‘visits atthe city’s sexually transmitted disease clinis,” Zenilman says. “Then the city decided to gradually eut back because of budgetary problems. The number of elinicians [medical personnel] went from seventeen to ten. The number of physicians went from three to essentially nobody. Patient visits Aropped 19 twenty-one thowsand. There alsa wae a similar drop in the amouat of field outreach: staff. There was a lot of politics —things that used to happen, like computer upgrades, did happen. It was a worst-case seenaro of city bureaucracy not functioning. They would run out of drugs.” ‘When there were 36,000 patient visits a year in the STD clinies of Baltimore's inser city in other words, the disease was ‘kept in equilibrium, At some point between 36,000 aad 21,000 patient visits a year, according to Zenilman, the disease erupted. I begas spilling out of the inner city, up the streets and highways that connect those neighborhoods to the rest ofthe city. Suddenly, people who might have bess infections for a week before getting treated were now going around infecting others for two or tinee or four weeks before they got cured. The breakdown in treatment made syphilis a much bigger issue than ithad been before, “There is a third theory, which belongs to John Potters, one of the country’s leading epidemiolosiss. His culprits are the physical ebanges in those years affecting East and West Baltimore, the heavily depressed asighborhioods on either side of Baltimore's downtown, where the syphilis problem was centered. In the mid-1990s, he points out, the city of Baltimore ‘embarked on a highly publicized policy of dysamiting the old 1960s-style public housing high-rises in East and West Baltimore. Two of the most publicized demolitions—Lexington ‘Terrace in West Baltimore and Lafayette Courts in East Baltimore—were huge projects, housing hundreds of families, that served as centers for crime and infectious disease. At the same time, people began to move out ofthe old row houses in East and West Baltimore, as those began to deteriorate az well, “Teas absolutely striking,” Pottert says, of the frst time he toured East and West Baltimore, “Fifty percent of the row houses were boarded up, and there was also a process where they destroyed the projects, What bappened was a kind of hollowing out. This fueled the diaspora. For years syphilis had been confined to a specific region of Baltimore, within highly confined sociosesual networks, The housing dislocation process served to move these people ta other part of Baltimore, and they took ther syphilis and other ° ‘What is interesting about these three explanations is that none of them is at all dramatic. The CDC thought that crack wae the problem. Bur i wasn't as if crack came to Baltimore forthe first time in 1995, Ithad been therefor years. What they were saying is that there was a subtle increas inthe severity ofthe crack problem inthe enid-19906, aud that chaage was enougl to sot off the yphlis epidemic, Zenilman, likewice, wasn’t saying thatthe STD clinics in Baltimore were shut down. They were simply sealed back, the numberof clinicius ent from seventeen totea, Nor was Potternt saying tht all Baltimore was hollowed ‘out, All it ook, he sai, was the demolition ofa handful of housing projects aad the abandonment of homes in key iors with them.dowatown neighborhoods to send syphilis over the top. I akes only the smallest of ehaages to shatter an epidemic’s equilibivn, ‘The second, and perhaps more interesting fact about these explanations is that all of them are deseribing a very different ‘way of tipping an epidemic. The CDC is talking about the overall contest for the disease—how the introduction and growth of an addictive drug can so change the environment of city that it can eause a disease to tip. Zenlman is talking about the disease itself. Whew the elinies were cut back, syphilis was given a second life. It had been an acue infection. It as now a elton infection, Tt had become a lingering problem: that stayed acound for weeks. Porterat, for his part, was focused on the people who were carrying syphilis. Syphilis, e was saying, was 8 disease earried by a certain kind of person in Baltimore—a ‘very poor, probably drug-using, exwally active individual. IE {har kind of person was suddenly transported from his or her old neighborhood toa new one—to 2 new part of town, where syphilis had never been a problem before—the disease would have an opportunity to tip. ‘There is more than one way to tip an epidemic, in other swords. Epidemics are a function ofthe people who transit infectious agents, the infectious agent ise, and the environment Jn which the infectious agent is operating. And when an epidemic tips, when iti jolted out of equilibrium, it tips because something has happened, some change has eccurred in one (or two or three) of those areas, These three agents of chaage I call the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of | Context 1 ‘When we say that a handful of East Village kids started the Hush, Puppies epidemic, or thatthe seattering ofthe residents ofa few housing projets was suieient to start Baltimoze's syphilis epidemic, what we are really saying is that ina given process or system some people matter more than ethers. This isnot, on the face oft, particularly radical notion. Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation onghly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of| ‘the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of eriminals commit 80 peteeat of crimes. Tweaty pereent of motorists cause 80 percent ofall accidents, Tweaty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of al beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even mote extreme: & tiny percentage of people da the majority of the work. Potterat, for example, once did an analysis ofa gonorthea epidemic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, looking a everyone ‘who came toa public health clinic for treatment of the disease over the spsee of six months. He found that about half of all the cases came, essentially, from four neighborhoods representing about 6 percent ofthe geosraphie area of the city. Half of those in that 6 percent, in tua, were socializing inthe same six bars. Porterat then interviewed 768 people in tha tiny subgroup and found that 600 of them either didn’ give gonorties to anyone else or gave it to only one other person. These people he called snontransmittes. The ones eausing the epidemic to grow—the cones who were infecting two and three and four and five other= ‘with their disease—were the remaining 168. In other words, in all ofthe city of Colorado Springs—a town of well in excess of,100,000 people—the epidemic of gonorthea tipped because of the activities of 168 people living in four small neighborhoods and basicaly frequenting the same six bars. Who were those 168 people? They aren’ ike you or me ‘They are people who go out every aight, people wito have vastly amore sexual paztuers than the nom, people whose lives and behavior are well outside ofthe ordinary. Inthe mid-1990s, for example, in the pool balls aud roller-skating rinks of East St Louis, Missouri, there was a man named Darnell “Boss Man” ‘McGee, He was big—over six feet—and charming, a talented skater, who wowed young girls with his exploits onthe rink. His specialty was thirteen and fourteen-year-olds, He bought them jewelry, took thera for ridas in hic Cadillac, got them high on crack, and had sex with them, Between 1995 and 1997, when he was shot dead by an unknown assailant, he slept with at least 100 women and—it turned out later—infected a least 30 of them with HIV, Inthe same two-year period, fifteen hundred miles away, near Buffalo, New York, another men—a kind of Boss Man clone —worked the distresaed downtown streets of Jamestown. His name was Nushawn Williams, although he also went by the sams “Face,” “Sly,” and “Shyteek.” Williams juggled dozens of girls, maintaining three of four diffrent apartments around the city, and all the while supporting himself by smugeling érugs up from the Bronx. (As one epidemiologist familiar withthe case fold me flatly, “The man was a genius. IFT could get away with what Williams did, M4 never have to work a day again in my life") Wiliams, like Boss Man, was a charmer. He would buy his girfriends rose, let them braid his long bair, and host all- night marijuana and malt liquorfueled orgies at his apartments “I slept with him three or four times in one aight.” one of his partners remembered. “Me and him, we used to party together all the time... After Face had sex, his fiends would do it too. One would walk ovt, the other would walk in.” Williams is now in jail, He is known to have infected at least sixteen of his former gisfriends with the AIDS Virus. And most famously, in the book And the Band Played On Randy Shilts discusses at length the so-called Patieat Zero of AIDS, the French-Canadian, flight attendant Gaetan Dugas, who claimed to have 2,500 sexual partners all over North America, and who was linked to at least 40 of the earliest cases of AIDS in California and New York. ‘These are the kinds of people who make epidemics of disease up, Social epidemics work in exactly the same way. They are also driven by the efforts of handful of exceptional people. In this ease, it's not sexual appetites that set them apart I's things Like how sociable they are, or how energetic or knowledgeable or influential among their peers. Inthe case of Hush Puppies, the reat mystery is how thoze shoes weat from something wora by a few-fashion forward downtown Manhattan hipsters to being sold in malls across the country. What was the connection between the East Village and Middle America? The Law of the Few says the answer is that one of these exceptional people found out about the trend, and through social connections and energy and enthusiasm and personality spread the word about Husk Puppies just as people like Gaetan Dugas and Nushawn Williams were able to spread HIV,1a Baltimore, when the eiy's public clinies suffered cutbacks, the nature of the syphilis affecting the city’s poor neighborhoods changed. It used to be an acute infection, something that most people could get treated fairly quickly before chey had a lance to infect many others. But with the eutbaeks, syphilis increasingly became a ehronie disease, and the disease's carriers baad three of four or five times longer to pass oa Epidemis tip because ofthe extraordinary efforts of afew select carters. But they lzo somtimes tip when something happens to transform the epidemic agent itself, ‘This isa well-known principle in virology. The strains off that circulate at the beginning of each winter’ flo epidemic are quite different from the steains of flu that cxculate a the end. The most famous fu epidemic of all—the pandemic of 1918— vas first spotted in the spring ofthat year and was. relatively speaking, quite tame. But over the summer the virus underwent some strange wansformation and over the next six moaths ended up killing between 20 and 40 millon people worldwide. Nothing bhad changed ia the way in which the virus was being spread, But the viris had suddenly become much more deadly. ‘The Dutch AIDS researcher Jaap Goudsmit argues that this same kiad of dramatic transformation happened with HIV. Govudsmit's work focuses on what is known as Pacumocystis cari puetmonia, of PCP. All of ws carry the bacteria ia our bodies, probably since birth or immediately thereafter In most of us it is harmless, Our imnmune eystemis ep it in check easily But if something, such as HIV, wipes out our immune system, it becomes so uncontrollable that it ean cause a deadly form of infection pneumonia, PCP isso common among AIDS patients, ia fies, that it has come to be seea as an almost certain indication ofthe preveace ofthe virus. What Goudstit did was go back ia the ‘edical literature and look for cases of PCP, and what he found is quite chilling. Just after World War Il, beginning inthe Baltic port city of Danzig and spreading through central Europe, there was an epidemic of PCP that claimed the lives of thousands of small children. Govudemit has analyzed one of the towns hit hardest by the PCP epidemic, the mining town of Heerlen in the Dutch province of Limburg. Heerlea had a training hospital for ridwives called the Kwweekschool voor Vroedvxouwen, single ‘uni of which —the so-called Swedish barrack—wse weed in the 1950s asa special ward for underweight or premature infants Between June 1955 and July 1958, 81 infants in the Swedish barrack came down with PCP and 24 died. Goudsmit thinks that this was an early HIV epidemic, and that somehow the virus got {nto the hospital, andl was spread from child to child by the then, apparently common, practice of sing the same needles over and cover again for blood transfusions or injections of antibiotics. He Mos likely at least one adelt—probably a coal miner from Poland, Czechoslovaki, ox taly—brought the virus to Limburg. This one adolt could have died from AIDS with lite notce..He could have transmitted the vinus to is wife and oftipring. His infected wife or girlfriend) could have aiven bieth in a Swedish batrack to a child who was BTV’infected but seemingly healthy. Unsterilized needles and syringes could have spread the virus from child to ehild. ‘Te tly strange thing about this story, of course, is that not all ofthe children ied. Only a third did. The others did what today ‘would seem almost impossible. They defeated HIV, purged it from ther bodies, sad went om to live bealthy lives In other words, the strains of HIV that were circulating back ia the 1950s, \were lot different from the steains of HIV that eizevlate today. ‘They were every bit as contagious. But they were weak enough that most people—even small children—were able to fight them off and survive them, The HIV epidemic tipped in the early 1980s, in short, not just because ofthe enormons changes in sexual behavior in the gay communities that made it possible for the virus o spread rapidly. It also tipped because HIV itself changed, For one reason or another, the virus became lot deadlier. Once it infected you, you stayed infected. Ie stuck ‘This idea ofthe importance of stickiness in tipping has ‘enormous implications for the way we regard social epidemics tas well. We tend to spead a lot of time thinking about how 19 make messages more contagious—how to reach as maay people as possible with onr products or ideas. But the hard part of, communication is often figuring out how to make sure a message doesn’t go in one eat and out the other: Stickiness seans that a message makes an impact. You ean't get it out of your head. It sticks in your memory. Whea Winston filter-tip cigarettes were introduced in the spring of 1954, for example, the company este up with the slogan “Winstoa tastes good like ‘cigarette should." Ar the time, the ungrammatical and somehow provocative use of “ike” instead of “as” created a ‘minor sensation. It was the kind of phrase that people talked bout like the Eamous Wendy's tagline from 1984 “Where's the bee?” In his history ofthe cigarette industry, Richaed Kluger ‘writes that the marketers at RJ. Reynolds, which sells Winston, ware “delighted withthe atention” and “made the offending slogan the Iyie ofa bouacy litle jingle on television and radio, and wryly defended their syntax asa colloguiaism rather than ‘bad grammar” Within mouths of its introduction, oa the strength of that catehy phrase, Winston tipped, mcing past Parliament, Keat, ad L&M into second place, behind Vieesoy, inthe ‘American cigarette mazket, Within a few years, it was the bestselling brand in the county. To this day. if you say to most Americans “Winston tastes good,” they eau finish the phrase, “like cigarette should.” That's a classically sticky advertising line, and stickiness isa critical component in tipping. Unless you remember what tell you, why would you ever ebange your behavior or buy my product or go to see my movie? The Stickiness Factor says that there are spevifie ways of making a contagious message memorable; there are relatively simple changes inthe presentation and structuring of information that caa make a big difference in how much of an impact it makes, 3. Every time someone in Baltimore comes 0 a public clinic for ‘weatment of syphilis or ganorhea, John Zenilman pgs his or ber address into his computer, so that the case shows up asalitle black star on s map of the city. I's rather like # medical version ofthe maps police departments put up on thei walls, with pins marking where crimes have occurred. On Zenilmaa’s snap the neighborhoods of Fast and West Baltimore, on ether side of the downtown core, ead tobe thick with blaek stars From those two spots, the cases radiate outward aloag the two central roadways that happen to cut through both neighborhoods. Inthe summer, whea the incidence of sexwally transmitted disease is highest, the clusters of black stars om the roads leading cut af East and West Baltimore become thick with eases. The disease is on the move. But ia the winter mouths, the map changes, When the weather tars cold, aad the people of East tnd Wast Baltimore are mick more likely to stay at home, away from the bas and clubs and steet comers where sexual transactions are made, the stars in each neighborhood fade away. ‘The seasonal effect on the number of eases is 30 strong that it {isnot hard to imagine that long, hard winter in Baltimore could bbe enough to slow or lessea aubetatially-—at leat forthe eensoa. —the growth of the syphilis epidemic Epidemics, Zenilman’s map demonstrates, are strongly Influenced by their siwation—by the eireumstanees and conditions and particulars ofthe environments in which they ‘operate, This much is obvious. Wha is interesting, thous, is how far this principle caa be extended, It en’ just prosaic factors like the weather that influence behavior. Even the smallest and subtest and most unexpected of factors can affect the way we act. One of the most infamous incidents ia New York City history, for example, was the 1968 stabbing death of vyoumg Queens woman by the name of Kitty Genovese Genovese was chased by her assailant and attacked three times on the street, over the course of half an hour, as thizw-eight of her neighbors watched from their windows, During that time, however, none ofthe thirty-eight witnesses called the police. The case provoked rounds of self-reeimination. It became symbolic ofthe cold and dehumanizing effects of urbaa life. Abe Rosenthal, whe would Inter become editor ofthe New York Times, wrote ia a book about the eae ‘Nobody can say why the thity-eight did not lift the phone ‘hile Miss Genovese was being attacked, since they cannot say themselves. It can be assumed, however, that their apathy vas indeed one of the big-city variety. It is almost a matier of psychological survival, if one is sorrounded aud pressed by nillions of people, to prevent them from constantly impinging on you, andthe only way to do this is to ignore them as often as possible, Indifference co one’s neighbor and his troubles isa conditioned reflex in life in New York as it is in other big cities. This is the kind of environmental explauation that makes inruitve sense to us. The anonymity and alienation of big-city life makes people hard and unfeeling. The tvth about Genovese, however, tums out fo be a litle more complicateé—and more interesting. Two New York City psychologists —Bibb Latane of Cohumbia University and Johu Darley of New York University —aubsoquently conducted a series of studies to uy to understand ‘what they dubbed the “bystander problem.” They staged emergencies of one kind of another indifferent situations iaorder to see who would come aud help, What they found, surprisingly, was that the one factor above all els that predicted helping behavior was how many witnesses there were to the Tn one experiment, for example, Latane and Darley had a student alone in a room stage an epileptic Gt. When there was jst one person next door, listening, that person rushed to the student's sid 85 percent of the time. But when subjeets thought that there were four others also overhearing the seizure, they came to the student's aid only 31 percent ofthe time, In another experiment, people who caw smoke seeping out from under 8 oorway would report it 75 percent ofthe ime when they were fa their own, but the incident would be reported only 38 percent ofthe time whea they were in a group, When people ave in @ group, in other words, responsibilty for acting is diffused. They assume that someone else will make the eal, or they assume that because no one else is acting, the apparent probles—the seizure-like sounds from the other room, the smoke from the door—isn't really a problem. Inthe ease of Kitty Genovese, then, social psychologists like Latane and Darley argue, the lesson is ot that no one ealled despite the fact that thirty-eight people heard her scream: its that ao oas called Because thity cight people head her scream, Lsnically had she been attacked aa lonely sect with just one witaes, she might have lived ‘The Key to geting people to change their behavior, in other ‘words to care about their neishbor in distress, sometimes les ‘with the smallest details of thei immediate situation, The Power of Context says that human beings are alot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem. 4, The three res ofthe Tipping Point—the Law ofthe Few, the Stickiness Factor, the Power of Context—offera way of making sense of epidemies. They provide us with direction for how to go about reaching a Tipping Point. The balance of thie book will take these ideas and apply them to other puzzling situations and spidemice from the world around us, How do these three rules help us understand teenage smoking, for example, or the phenomenon of word of mouth, or crime, ofthe rise of & bestseller? The answers may surprise you.The Law of the Few ‘CONNECTORS, MAVENS, AND SALESMEN On tte afternoon of April 18, 1775, a young boy who worked ata livery stable in Boston overheard one British army officer say to another something about “hell to pay tomorrow.” The stable boy ran with the news to Boston’s North End, to the home ofa silversmith named Paul Revere. Revere listened gravely; this was not the first rumor to come his way that day. Earlier, he had been told of an unusual number of British officers gathered on Boston’s Long Wharf, talking in low tones. British crewmen, had been spotted scurrying about in the boats tethered beneath the HMS Somerset and the HMS Boyne in Boston Harbor. Several other sailors were seen on shore that morning, running what appeared to be last-minute errands. As the afternoon wore on, Revere and his close friend Joseph Warren became more and more convinced that the British were about to make the major move that had long been rumored—to march to the town ofLexington, northwest of Boston, to arrest the colonial leaders John Hancock ané Samuel Adams, and then on tothe town of ‘Concord to seize the stores of guns and ammunition that some of the local coloaial militia had stored there. What happened next has become part of historical legend, 2 tale told to every American schoolehild, At ten o'clock that night, Warren and Revere met. They decided they had to wara the communities surounding Boston thatthe British were on their way, so that local militia could be roused to meet them, Revere was spisited aeross Boston Hazbor tothe fery landing at CChaslestown, He jumped on a horse and began bis “midnight ride” to Lexington. In two hours, he covered thirteen miles. Ia every town he passed through along the way—Charlestown, Medford, North Cambridge, Menotomy—he knocked on doors ‘and spread the word, telling local colonial leaders ofthe ‘oncoming British, and telling them to spread the word to others, (Church bells stated ringing. Drums started beating. The news spread like a vinis as those informed by Paul Revere sent out riders of their own, atl alarms were going off throughout the entire region, The word was in Lincoln, Massachusetts, by one ‘am, in Sudbury by three, in Andover, forty miles northwest of Boston, by five am., aud by nine in the morning had resched ae far west as Ashby, near Worcester. When the British finally began their march toward Lexington on the morning of the sineteeath, their foray into the countryside was met—to their utter astonishment—with organized and free resistance, In ‘Concord that day, the British were confronted and soundly beaten by the colonial militia, aud from that exchange came the svar known as the American Revolution, Poul Revere's ride is perhaps the most famous historical example ofa word-of-mouth epidemic. A piece of extraordinary news traveled a long distance ina very shor time, mobilizing an cntire region to arms, Not all word-of-mouth epidemics are this sensatioual, of course, Buti ie safe to say that word of mouth is —oven in this age of mass communications and multmillioa- ollar advertising campaigns—stil the most important form of human communication. Think, for a moment, about the lat expensive restaurant you went to, the last expensive piece of clothing you bought, aud the last movie you saw. Ia how many of those cases was your decision about where to spend your money heavily influenced by the recommendation ofa friend? There are plenty of advertising executives who think that precisely because ofthe sheer ubiquity of marketing efforts these days, word-of-mouth appeals have become the only kind of ‘persuasion that most of us respond to anymore. Bot for all that, word-of-mouth remains very mysterious, People pass ot all kinds of information to each other all the time. But it’s only inthe rare instaace that such an exchange ignites | word-of-mouth epidemic. There is a small restaurant in my neighborhood that I love and that I've been telling my friends snout for six mouths, But its still half empty. My endorsement clearly isn’t enough to start a word of mouth epidemic, yt there ce sestauraats that to my mid aren't aay better than the one ia ray acighborhood that open and within a mater of weeks aze taming customers away, Why i it that some ideas and trends ‘and messages “tip” and others don't? In the case of Paul Revere's ride, the answer to this seems easy. Revere was carrying a sensational piece of news: theBritish were coming. But if you look closely atthe events of that ‘evening, that explanation doesn't solve the riddle either. At the ame time that Revere began his re north and west of Boston, 2 fellow revolutionary—a tanner by the name of William Dawes— spt out on the same trgentetrand, working his way to Lexiagton via the towns west of Boston, He was carrying the identical ‘message, throughs just as many towns over just as many mi oul Revere, But Dawes’ rds dida't cet the countryside afc ‘The local militia leaders weren't alerted. In fact, co few men from one of the mia towas he rade tarough—Waltham—fought the following day that some subsequent historians concluded that it must have been a strongly pro-Briish community. It ‘wasn't The people of Waltham just didn't find out the British ‘were coming until it was too ate. IFt were only the news itself ‘that mattered in a word-of-mouth epidemic, Dawes would now ‘be as Famous as Paul Revere, He isa’t, So Why did Revere succeed whete Dawes failed? The answer is thatthe sucoess of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with particular and rare se of soval gifts, Revere’s news tipped and Daiwar's dida’t because ofthe differences betweea the two met ‘This isthe Law of the Few, which I briefly outlined inthe previous chapter. But there [oaly gave examples ofthe kinds of people—highly promiscuous, sexually predatory—who are critical to epidemics of sexually transmitted disease. This ‘chapter is about the people critical to social epidemics and what makes someone like Paul Revere different fromm someone like ‘William Dawes. These kinds of people are all sound us. Yet we often fail to give them proper credit for the role they play in our Lives, I call them Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen, L In the late 1960s, the psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to find an answer to what is known asthe small- world problem. The problem is this: how aze huraau beings connected? Do we all belong to separate worlds, operating simultaneously but autonomously, so that the links between any two people, anywhere in the world, ate few and distant? Or ae ‘we all bound up togethar in a grand, interlocking web? In a way, Milgram was asking the very same kind of question that began thie chapter, namely, how does an ides ot a trend ora piece of news—the British are coming!—travel through a population? Milgram’s idea was ta test this question with a chain letter He got the names of 160 people who Lived in Omaha, Nebrasks, and mailed each of them a packet. In the packet was the name and address of «stockbroker who worked in Boston aud lived in ‘Sharon, Massachusetts. Each person was instructed to write his or her aame on the packet aad send it on toa friend or oquaiatance who he of she thought would get the packet closer to the stockbroker. I'you lived in Omaha and bad a cousin outside of Boston, forexample, you might send itt him, on the rounds that—even if your cousin did not himself know the stockbroker—he would be # lot more likely to beable to get to the stockbroker in two oF three or four steps. The idea was that when the packet finally arrived at the stockbroker's house, Milgram could look tthe list ofall those whose hands it wentthrough to get there and establish how closely connected someone chosen at random from one part ofthe country was to another person in another part of the country. Milgram found ‘that most ofthe letters reached the stockbroker in five or sis steps, Ths experiment is where we get the concept of sis, degrees of separation That phrase i now co familia that it is easy to lose sight of how suprising Milpram’s findings were. Most of ws don’t have particularly broad and diverse groups of frieads. In one well- ‘known study, a group of payehologists asked people living inthe Dyekman publie housing project in northera Manhattan to name thei closest friend ia the project: 88 perceat ofthe friends lived inthe same building, and haf lived on the same floor. Ta general, people chose frieads of similar age aud race. But ifthe friead lived down the hall, then age and race became a lt less important. Proximity overpowered similarity. Another study, done on students atthe University of Utah, found that if you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, he'll say it is ‘because he anc his friend share similar atitudes. But if you actually quiz the 1Wo of them oa their attitudes, you'll find out that what they actually shave is similar activities, We're frends ‘with the people we do things with, as much as we are with the people we resemble, We don't seek out fread, in other words ‘We associate withthe people who occupy the some small, pysical spaces that we do. People in Omaba aze aot, asa rule friends with people who live halfway across the couatey in Sharon, Massachusetts. “When I asked an intelligent friend of ‘mine how maay steps he thought it would take, he estimated that itwould requite 100 intermediate persons or more to move from, [Nebraska to Sharoa,” Milgram wrote, atthe time. “Many people make somewhat similar estimates, and are surprised to learn that only five intermediaries will—on average—suttice. Somehow it oes not aecord with ituition.” How did the packet get vo Sharoa ia just five steps? ‘The answer is that inthe six degrees of separation, not all degrees are equal. When Milgram analyzed his experiment, for example, he found that maay of the chains from Omaha to Sharoa followed the same asymmetrical pattern. Twenty-four letters reached the stockbroker at his home in Sharoa, and of those, sixteen were given to him by the same person, a clothing ‘merchant Milgram calls Mr. Jacobs. The balance of letters eame to the stockbroker at his office, and of those the majority came through two other men, whom Milgram calls Mr, Brown aud Mr. Jones. In all, half of the responses that came back tothe stockbroker were delivered to him by thece same three people. ‘Think of it. Dozens of people, chosen at random from a large Midwestern city, send ovt letters independently, Some go through college acquaintances, Some send their letters to relatives, Some sead them co old workmates, Everyone bas a different stategy. Yer inthe end, when all of those separate and idiosyncratic chains were completed, half of those letters ended up in the hands of Jacobs, Jones, and Brown. Six desrees of| separation doesn't mesa that everyone is linked to everyone else in just sx steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked 0 everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are Linked to the world through those special few: ‘There isan easy way to explore tis idea. Suppose that you made alist ofthe forty people whom you would eall your cireleof friends (not ineluding family and co-workers) and in each case worked backward watil you could identify the person who is ‘ultimately responsible for seting in motion the series of| connections tat led to that friendship. My oldest friend, Bruce, for example, I met in first grade, so I'm the responsible party. That's easy: Tmet my friend Nigel because he lived down the hall ia college from my friend Tom, whom I met becatee in freshman year he invited me fo play touch football. Tom is ‘responsible for Nigel, Once you've made all ofthe conaections, the strange thing again and again. [have a friend named Amy, whom [met whes het friend Katie brought her to a restaurant where Iwas having dinner one night. I know Katie because se is the bestfriend of iy friend Larissa, whom [know because I was told to look her ‘up by a mutual fiend of bath of ours—Mike A —whom Tknow ‘because he went to sehool with another friend of mine—Mike B, —who used to work at a political weekly with my friend Jacob, Xo Jacob, no Amy. Similasly T met my friend Sarak S. at my birliday party a year ago, bates ate wae there with a writer named David who was thereat the invitation of is agent, Tina, ‘whom I met through my friend Leslie, whom Iknow because sister, Nina, sa friend of my friend Ann's, whom I met through iy ld roommate Maura, who was my roommate because she ‘worked with a waiter aamed Sarah L., who was a college friend of my ftiend Jacob's, No Jacob, ao Sarah S. In fact, whea I go| down my list of forty fiends, thirty of them, in one way or another, lead back to Jacob. My sorial circle i, in reality, nota circle tis a pyran And athe top of the pyramid isa single person—Faccb—wio is responsible for an overwhelming fs that you will ind the same names coming wp sajrity ofthe relationships that constitute my life. Not only is ray social cirle nota circle, but it's not “mine” either. Is belongs to Jacob. 1's more like a club that he invited ae to join, These people who lik us up with dhe world, who bridge Omaha and Sharon, who introduce us to our social cieles—these people on ‘whom we rely more heavily than we realize—ate Connectors, people with a special eft for bringing the world together. ‘Whar makes someone a Connector? The fist—and most obvious—eriterion is that Connectors know lots of people. They ae the kinds of people who know everyone, All of us know someone like this. But I don’t think that we spend a lot of time thinking about the importance of these kinds of people, 'm not even sue that most of us really believe that the kind of person swho knows everyone really knows everyone. But they do. Tht is simple way 1 show this, Inthe porngzapl below isa list of around 250 surnames, all takea at random fom the Manhattan phone book. Go down te lst and give yourself point every time you see a surname that is shared by someone you know. (The definition of “know” here is very broad. For example, if Yon sat down next to that person ona tain, you wuld know their name if they introduced themselves to you and they would know your name.) Multiple asmes count. Tthe name is Tohasoa, in other words, and you know three Johnsons, you get three points. The idea is that your score on this tet showlé roughly represent how social you are. I's a simple way of estimating how many fiends and acquaintances you have‘Aleazi, Alvarez, Alpera, Ametrano, Andrews, Area, Arasteia, Ashford, Bailey, Ballout, Bamberger, Baptista, Bar Barrows, Baskerville, Bassiti, Bell, Bokgese, Braudao, Bravo, Brooke, Brightman, Billy, Blau, Bohen, Bohn, Borsuk, Brendle, Butler, Calle, Cantwell, Carell, Chiatund, Cirker, Coles, Collas, Couch, Callegher, Caleatera, Cook, Carey, Cassell, Chen, Chung, Clarke, Cohn, Carton, Crowley, Curbelo, Dellamanna, Diaz, Dirar, Duncan, Dagostino, Delakas, Dillon, Donaghey, Daly, Dawson, Edery, Ellis, Elliot, Eastman, Easton, Famous, Fermin, Fialco, Finklestein, Farber, Falkia, Feinmaa, Friedman, Garduct, Gelpi, Glascock, Grandéield, Greenbaui, Greenwood, Gruber, Gail, Goff, Gladwell, Greenup, Gannon, Ganshaw, Garcia, Geanis, Gerard, Gericke, Gilbert, Glassman, Glazer, Gomendio, Gonzalez, Greenstein, Guglielmo, Gurman, Haberkorn, Hoskins, Hossein, Hamm, Hardwick, Harrell, Houptman, Hawkins, Henderson, Hayman, Hibara, Hehmana, Herbst, Hedges, Hogan, Hoffinan, Horowitz, Hsu, Huber, Ikiz, Jaroschy, Johann, Jacobs, Jara, Johnson, Kassel, Keegan, Kuroda, Kavanau, Keller, Kevill, Kiew, Kimbrough, Kline, Kossoff, Ketztzky, Kohn, Kiesler, Kosser, Korte, Leibowitz, Lia, Liv, Lowrance, Lund, Laux, Leifer, Leung, Levine, Leiw, Lockwood, Logrono, Lohner, Lowet, Laber, Leonardi, Marten, MeLeaa, Michaels, Miranda, Moy, Marin, Muir, Murphy, Marodon, Matos, Mendoza, Muraki Neck, ‘Needham, Noboa, Null, O'Flyaa, O°Neill, Orlowski, Perkins, Peper, Pevre, Pons, Pruska, Paulino, Popper, Poter, Perez, Portocartero, Punwasi, Rader, Rankin, Ray, Reyes, Richardson, Ritter, Roos, Rese, Rosenfeld, Roth, Rutherford, Rustin, Ramos, Regan, Reisman, Renkert, Roberts, Rowan, Rene, Rosario, Rothbart, Saperstein, Schoenibrod, Schwed, Sears, Statosky, Sutphen, Sheehy, Silverton, Silverman, Silverstein, Sklar, Slotkia, Speros, Stollman, Sadowski, Schles, Shapiro, Sigdel, Snow: Spencer, Steinkol, Stewart, Stites, Stopnik, Stonehill, Tayss, Tiluey, Temple, Torfeld, Towasend, Trimpin, Tuechin, Villa, Vasillov, Voda, Waring, Weber, Weiasteia, Wang, Wegimont, ‘Weed, Weishaus. have given this tet to at least a dozen groups of people. One ‘was a freshman World Civilizations clase st City College in Manhattan. The students were all in their late teens or early twenties, many of them recent immigrants to Americ, and of middle and lower income. The average seore in that class was 20.96, meaning that the average person in the claes knew 21 ‘people with the came last names as the people on my list Taleo gave the test to a group of health educators and academies ata conference in Princeton, New Jersey. This group were mostly i their forties and fifties largely white, highly educsted—many had Ph.D."s—and wealthy. Their average score was 39, Then T gave the test to a relatively random sample of my friends and scquaintances, mostly journalists and professionals in their late twventies and thities. The average score was 41, These results sholda’t be all that surprising, College students don't have as ‘wide # eile of acquaintances as people in their forties, Tt makes sense that between the ages of tweaty and forty the aumber of people you Inow should roughly double, and that upper-incomeprofessionals should kaow more people than lower-income immigrants. In every group there was also quite a ange between, the highest and the lowest seorers, That makes sense 190, I think, Real estate salesmen know more people than computer hacker. What was suprising, though, was how enormows that range was In the college class, the low score was 2 and the high score was 95. tn my random sample, the low score was 9 and the high score was 118, Even atthe conference in Princeton, which was a highly homogenous group of people of similar age, edveation tid income —who were all, with afew exceptions, ia the same professioa—the range was enormous. The lowest seore was 16. ‘ha highest score was 108. All told, Ihave givea the test to bout 400 people. Of those, there were two dozen or so scores ‘under 20, eight over 90, and four more over 100. The other snprisig thing ie that I found hig scorers in every social group looked a, The scores of the students at City College were less, con average, than adult scores, But even in that group there are people whose social circle is four or five times the size of other people's, Spriakled among every walk of life n other words, are 1 baadful of people with a tly extraordinary knack of making fiends and acquaintances. They are Connectors (One of the highest seorers on my acaivaintanee survey was 8 aon named Roger Horchow, who isa successful businessmaa from Dallas. Horchow founded the Horchow Collection, a high- end mal order merchandise company. He has also enjoyed considerable success on Broadway, backing sueh hits as Les Miserables and Phaniom of the Opera and producing the award- ‘winning Gershivin musical Crazy for You. L was introduced to Horchow through his daughter, who isa frend of mine, and 1 ‘went to see him in his Manhattan pied-i-teare an elegant apartment high above Fifth Avenue. Horchow is slender and composed. He talks slowly, with a slight Texas drawl, He has @ kind of wey ironic charm that i uterly winning. If you sat aext to Roger Horchow on a plane ride across the Atlantic, he would start talking asthe plane taxied tothe ruaway, you would be laughing by the time the seatbelt sign was turned off, and when xyou landed atthe other end you'd wonder where the time went ‘Whea I gave Horchow the lis of uames from the Manhattan directory, he went through the lst very quickly, muttering names under his breath as his pencil skimmed the page. He seored 98. 1 sxtspect that had I given him another 10 mints to thinks, he ‘woud have scored even hieher ‘Why did Horchow do so well? When I met him, I became convinced that knowing lots of people was a kind of sill, something that someone might set outro do deliberately and that could be perfected, and that those teclaniques were central to the fact that he knew everyone. I kept asking Horchow how all of the connections in his life had helped him in the business world, because I thought that the two things had tobe linked, but the questions seemed to puzzle him. It wasn't that his connections hhada’t helped him. It was that he didn’: think of his people collection a= a business ststegy. He just thought of it az something he did. Tt was who he was. Horchow has an instinctive and natural gift for making social connections. He's ‘ot agaressive about i, He's not one of those overly social, ‘back-slapping types for whom the process of acquiring cquaintaaces is obvious aud self-serving. He's more aa observer. with the dry, knowing manner of someone who likes toremain Line bit on the ouside, He simply likes people, in 9 zeaine and powerful way, aud he finds the patterns of acquaintanceship and interaction in which people arrange themselves fo be endlessly fascinating, When T met with Horchow, he explained tome hovr he won the rights to revive the Gershwia musical Girl Crazy Crazy for You. The full story took tweaty minotes, This is just a portion, If seems at all, calculating, it shouldn't, Horchow told this story with a gentle, self-mocking air He wae, think, deliberately playing up the ldiosyneraies of hi personality. But as a portent of how his mind works—aad of what makes someone a Coauestor—I think it's perfectly accurate: Ihave a friend named Mickey Schaenea, who lives in New ‘York. He said, [know you love Gershwin, I have met George Gershwin’s old giltriend, Her name is Emily Paley, She was also the sister of Ira Gershwin's wife, Lenore. She lives in the Village aad she has invited us to dinner. So anyway, [met Enily Paley, and I saw a picture Gershwin had painted of her. Her husband, Lou Paley, wrote with Ire Gershwin and ‘George Gershsvin easly on, when Ira Gershwin still celled himself Archur Franeis. That was one Lik. Thad luach with a fellow called Leopold Godowsky, who is the soa of Frauces Gershwin, George Gershwin’ sister She married a composer named Godowsky. Attine Gershwin’s son was also there, His name is Mack Gershova, So they said—wvoll, why should we let you have the rights to Gir Crazy? Who are you? You've never ben in the theater So then I started polling out my coineidenees, Your aunt, Enuly Paley. I went to her house, The picture with her inthe red shawl— you've seen that picture? I pulled out all the little links. Then we all went to Hollywood and we went over to ‘Mis, Gershwin's house and I sid, Pm so happy to meet You, new your sister. loved your husband's work. Ob, and then I plled out my Los Angeles friend. When Twas at ‘Neiman Mareus, a lady wrote @ cookbook. Her name was Mildred Knopf. Her husband was Edwin Knopf, the movie producer. He did Audrey Hepburn’: stuff. Hie brother wae the publisher. We introcuced ler cooktboos in Dallas, aad Mildred became a good fread, We just loved her, ad witea 1 ‘was in L.A. Iwould call on her Lalways keep up with people, Well, it turns out Edwin Knopf was George Gershwin’s closest friend. They had Gershwin's pictures all over their house, He was with Gershwin wien he wrote “Rhapsody in Blue” in Asheville, North Cazolina. Mr. Knopf ‘ied, But Midred’s sil living. She's niney-eight now. So ‘when I went to see Lee Gershwin, we meationed that we had {vst heea to #92 Milseed Knap. She enid-—You laow her? (Ob, why haven't we met before? She gave us the rights iaamediately. In the cource of our conversation, Horchow did this over and again, delighting in tying together the loose ends of a lifetime, For his seventieth birthday. he attempted to track down a fiend from elemeatary school named Bobby Hunsicker, whom he hadn't seen in sixty years. He sen letters to every Bobby Honsicker he could find, asking them if they were the Hunsicker ‘who lived at 4301 Perth Lane in CineinnatThis is aot normal social behavior. 1's a Linle unosual Horchow collects people the same way others collect stamps. He remembers the boys he played with sixty years ago, the address of is bes friend growing up, the name ofthe mea his college siliiend had a crush on when she spent her junior year overseas, These dens are critical to Horchow. He keeps ou his computer asoster of 1,600 names and addresses, and on each eutty is 8 note describing the citeumstances uader which he met the person, When we were talking, he took outa litle red pockst diary “If met you ang like you and you happea to mention your birthday, I write it ia and you'll get a birthday card fom Roger Hotshow. See hera—Monday wae Ginger Vioom"= bintiday, and the Whittenburgs fist anniversary. And Alaa Schwartz's birthday is Friday sad ove yard mea’s is Saturday Most of us, think, shy away ffom this kind of cultivation of| oquaintances. We ha devoted. Acquaintances we keep at arm’s length. The reason we don't send birthday cards to people we don’t really caren great eal about is that we don't want to fee obliged to have dinner swith them or see a movie with them or vist them whea they’ sick. The purpose of making an acquaintance, for most of us s to evaluate whether we want to tur that person into a friend we don't feel we have the time othe energy to maintain meaningful contact with everyone, Horchow is quite different. The people he puts in his diary oro his computer are acquaintances —people the might run into only once a year or once every few years—and bie dosen't chy away from the obligation tht that connection requites. He has mastered what sociologists call the “weak tie.” ly yet casual social conection, More than that, he's ‘our circle of fiends, to whom we are happy with the weak te, After T met Horchow, I fet slightly {zvstrated, I woated to know him better, but I wondered wheter would ever have the chance. I don't think he shaved the same frustration with me, I thnk he's someone who sees value and pleasure ina casual meeting. ‘Why is Horchow so different from the rest of us? He doesn't ‘nove. He thinks it has someting to de with being an only child whose father was often away. But that doesn’t really explain it Perhaps iti best to all the Connector impulse simply that—an ‘impulse, just one of the many personality traits that distinguish ‘one human being from another 3 ‘Connectors are important for more than simply the number of people they know: Their imporeance is also fonction of the kinds of people they know. Perhaps the best way to understand this point is through the popular poslar game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” The idea behind the game is to try to link any actor of actress, through the movies they've bees ia, ta the actor ‘Kevin Bacon in less than six steps, So, for example, OJ. Simapsoa was in Mabed Gaon with Priscila Presley, who was ia Ford Fairlane with Gilbert Gotitied, who was ip Beverly Hills (Cop IT with Paul Reiser, who was in Diner with Kevin Bacon. ‘That's four steps. Mary Pickford was in Screen Snapshots with CClask Gable, who was in Combat merioa with Tony Romano, ‘who, thisty-five years later, was in Starting Over with Bacon, ‘That’ three stepe, Recently, a computer scientist at the University of Vizini by the name of Brett Tjaden actally satdown and figured ovt what the average Bacon aumber is forthe ‘quarter million oso actors and actesses who have played ia television films or major motioa pictures aad came up with 2.8312 steps. Anyone who has ever acted, in eer words, can be Linked to Bacon in an average of under three steps. That sounds impressive, except tht Tjaden then went back and performed an even more heroic calculation, figuring out what the average degree of connectedaess was for everyone who had ever acted in Hollywood. For example, how mauy steps on average doe it take to lik everyone in Hollywood to Robest DeNio or Shirley ‘Temple or Adam Sandler? Tjaden found that when he listed all, Hollywood actors in order oftheir “connectedness,” Bacon. ruked only 669th, Martin Sheen, by contrast ean be connected to every other actor in 2.63681 steps, which puts him almost 650 places higher than Bacon. Elliot Gavld cau be connected even sore quickly, in 2.63601. Among the top fiften are poop like Robert Mitcham aad Gene Hackman aud Donald Sutherland aud Shelley Winters and Burgess Meredith. The best-connected actor ofall ime? Rod Steiger: ‘Why is Kevin Bacon so fa behind these ators? One big factor is that Bacon isa lot younger thaa most of them and as a result iss made fever movies. But that explains only ome of the difference. There are los of people, for example, whe have smade lots of movies and aren't particularly well connected. John ‘Wayne, for example, made an extraordinary 179 movies in his sixty-year career and sil ranks only 116th, at 2.7173. The problem is that more thaa half of Joba Wayas"s movies were Westerns, meaning that he made the samme kind of movie with the same kind of actors over aad over agaia But take someoue like Steiger: he has made great movies like the Oscar-winning On the Mevexfionr and dreadful movies like Car Pool. He won an Oscar for his tole in Jn the Heat ofthe {Night and also made "B” movie co bad they went stesight to ‘video. He's played Mussolini, Napoléon, Pontus Plate, and Al (Capone. He's been in thitty-ciaht dramas, twelve crime pictures and comedies, eleven thrillers, eight action films, seven ‘Westerns, six war movies, four documentaries, dee hortor flicks, two sci-fi films, and a musical, ating others, Rod Steiger is the best-coansoted actor in history because he has mianaze 9 move up aad down and back and forth among all he differeat ‘worlds and subcultures aad aiches and levels thatthe acting profession has to offer This is what Connectors ate lke. They are the Rod Steigers cof everyday life. They are people whom all of ws esa reach in ‘only @ few atape because, for one season or another, they manage to occupy mauy different worlds and subcultures and aiehes. Ia Steiger’ case, of course, his high connectedness is a function of his versatility a5 an actor aud, in ll likelihood, some degree of | ‘good hnck. But ia the ease of Connectors, their ability to span many differeat world i a function of something intrinsic to their personality, come combination of curiosity, self-confidence, sociability, aad eueray. Toace met classic Connector in Chicago by the name of Lois Weisberg. Weisberg serves asthe Commissioner of Cultural Affairs forthe City of Chicago, But that is only the latest in what dnae been an extraordinary string of experiences and careers. la the early 1950s, for axample, Weisberg ran a drama tronpe in| (Chisago. In 1956, che decided to stage a festival to aac thecentenary of George Berard Shaw's birth, and then began, puting outa newspaper devoted to Shaw, which mutated into an underground, alternative weekly called The Paper: On Friday nights people from all over the eity would gather thete for editorial meetings. William Friedkin, who would go on to direct The French Connection ané The Esorcist, was a regula, as Was, the attorney Elmer Gertz (who was one of Nathan Leopold's attorneys) and some of the editors fiom Playboy, which was just top the sticet. People like Art Farmer and Thelonis Moale and John Coltrane and Lenny Broce would stop by when they were in town. (Bruce actually lived with Weisberg fora while. “My mother was hysterical about it, especially one day when she rang the doorbell aad he answered in a bath towel,” Weisberg = ‘We had a window on the pore, and he didn’t have a key, so the window ws always laf open for him. There were a lt of roome in that house, and a lot of people stayed there and I dida’t know they were there, I never could stand his jokes. I di’t really lke his act. Tcoulda’t stand all the words he was using") After The Paper folded, Lois tok: a job doing publi relation: for sa injury rehabilitation institute. From thee, she weat to work for @ public interest law fim called BPI, and while at BPI she becatne ‘obsessed with the fact that Chicago's parks were crumbling and neglected, so she gathered together a motley collection of nature lovers, historians, civie activists, nd housewives and founded 3 lobbying group called Friends of the Parks. Thea she became alarmed because commuter railroad that ran along the sont shore of Lake Michiges-—from South Bead to Chicago—was about to shut down, so she gathered together a motley collection of railway enthusiasts, environmentalists, and commuters and founded South Shore Recreation, and saved the railroad. Thea she became executive director of the Chicago Conacil of Lawyers, «progressive lezal group. Thea she ran @ local ‘congressman's campaign, Then she got the position of director of special events forthe first black mayor of Chicago, Harold ‘Washington, Then she quit government and opened a small stand ina flea market. Then she weat o work for Mayor Richard Daley-—where she is to this day—as Chicago's Commissioner of, (Coltoeal Afar Ifyou go through that history and keep count, the aumber of ‘worlds that Lois has belonged to comes to aight: the actors, the writers, the doctors, the lawyers, the parklovers, the politicians, the railroad buff, and the flea market aficionados. Whea I asked ‘Weisberg to make her own list, she eame up with ten, because che added the architects and the horptality industry people she ‘works with in her current job. But she was probably being ‘modest, because if you looked harder at Weisbera's life you could probably subdivide her experiences into fifteen or twenty worlds, Thay aren't separate worlds though. The point sbout ‘Connector is that by having afoot in so many different worlds, they have the effect of bringing them all together ‘Ouce—and this would have been in the mid-1950s— Weisberg took the train to Nev York to attend, on a whim, the Scieuce Fiction Writers Convention, where she met a young ‘writer by the name of Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke took a shine to ‘Weisberg, and next tim he was in Chicago he called her up. “He ‘was ata pay phone,” Weisberg recalls. “He said, is there anyone in Chicago I should meet. told him to come over to my house.” Weisberg has alow. raspy voice, baked hard by half century ofnicotine, and she pauses between sentences to give herself the opportunity fora quick puff. Even when she's not smoking, she pases anyway, a ifto keep ia practice for those momeats wisen she is, “T called Bob Hughes. Bob Hughes was one of the people who wrote for my paper” Pause. “T said, do you know auyone in Chicago interested in talking to Arthur Clarke. He said, yeah, Isaac Asimov is in towa, And this guy Robert, Robert—Robest Heinlein. So they all came over and sat in my study.” Pause. “Thea they called over to me aad they said, Lois... caa’t remember the word they used, They had some word for me. Tt was something about how I was the kind of person who brings people together.” ‘This is in some ways the archetypal Lois Weisberg story. First she reaches out to somebody, to someone outside her ‘world, She was in rama atthe time. Arthur Clarke wrote seience fiction. Thea, equally important, that person responds to her. Lots of us reach out 10 those different from ourselves, or to those more famous or successful than we are, but that gesture isa’t always reciproceted. Then there's the fact that when Arthur Clarke comes 10 Chicago and wants to be eonneeted, to be Linked up with someone else, Weisberg comes up with Isaac “Asimov. She saye it was a fluke thet Asimov was ia town, Butif inwasn't Asimoy, it would have been someone else. (One ofthe things that psople remember about Weisbera’s Friday night salons back in the 1950s was that they were always, effortlessly, cially integrated, The point i not that without that salon blacks wonlda’t have socialized with whites on the Nowth Side. Itwas rae back then, but it happened. The point is that ‘when blacks socialized with white inthe 1950s in Chicago, it

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