Understanding Influence, and Making it work for you

Is technology levelling the field for the moderately connected individual, see if you agree?




I finally got around to reading the CNET Networks article on "Understanding Influence, and Making It Work for You", you'll find the full text here

It investigates the whole are of Influence and the research blows away a few myths. The full text is worth a read (9 pages with a few diagrams). The points I took out of it were as follows:

• The idea of a few highly influential individuals concentrated over a mass of other does not hold (someone better tell NIKE ans Gillette)
• Weak Links, those informal relationships between groups, are more powerful than we thought. The reason is that they allow different clusters to interact with the person in between acting as an idea pollinator
• Technology matters, it's mush easier to build and maintain a network when you have the tools that can scale.
  
• The pyramid model (highly influencer at the top) has given way to a diamond model of the moderately connected majority.
• Getting asked for advice and giving it greatly accelerates the growth of your network
• Influencers tend to be active contributes and hunters of unique and trusted information. Which in turn makes them authorities.

I initially thought that the survey was biased because of its survey pool (all technology subscribers) but then I had a thought, maybe the moderately connected majority are becoming more influential because of technology. The "soft-skill" that was networking can now be compensated for with technology tools. Now we are being judged by our actions and discoveries rather than our communication skills alone.