Malcolm Gladwell’s investigation of the Tipping Point is very interesting and has always convinced me even from the second page of his book. The idea that when a qualified critical mass of participants engage in something an explosion of followers will result seems to explain a lot of the network culture phenomena that we see happen around us. It’s all about hitting the right target market, and allowing those network leaders do their jobs and lead the way for the rest of the pack. Vitamin Water, Smart Water, Twitter, HushPuppies, the reivival of Puma…just to name a few.
But what about when things fall out of network culture? Don’t things in our society fall out of fashion just as quickly as they come into fashion? Isn’t there as much as a “falling point” as there is a “tipping point?” Our culture’s demand curve for everything in life is indeed a true bell curve. The tipping point explains the curve’s sudden rise up the first half of the curve, and the falling point explains the curve’s sudden fall down the second half.
Much like how the public masses will jump on ship when enough network leaders jump on ship, network leaders are just as quick to jump off ship when enough of the public masses jump on ship. This reverse phenomenon describes the falling point.
