Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

by Derek Thompson

a person can only be advertised so many times in the same format before they become cynical,” Wolfe said. “My brain is constantly looking for where you are trying to advertise to me. Visiting the sororities worked for a long time, but now I think it’s about finding the right person inside of each network who can act as my proxy.” The most important element in a global cascade isn’t magically viral elements or mystical influencers. Rather it is about finding a group of people who are easily influenced. It turns the influencer question on its head. Don’t ask, “Who is powerful?” Instead ask, “Who is vulnerable?” In Duncan Watts’s computer models, global cascades happen when a trigger hits a densely connected audience clustered around a commonality, a soft cult. Whitney Wolfe discovered the same. “I often ask my team if they’d rather advertise on a New York City taxi or with a sticker on a backpack,” she said. “The NYC taxi cab will be seen by thousands of people, and the backpack sticker might only create curiosity among a handful.” But Wolfe, like Vincent Forrest, prefers the smaller emblem of identity, a jumping-off point for a conversation between friends. “When I’m doing my job well,” Forrest told me, “I’m saying something precise that is specific enough that it feels personal and relatable to others with the same interests.” The world isn’t a uniformly connected glob of people. It’s still a billion clusters, cliques, and cults. What Watts sees in his models, what Wolfe s...

You spend your childhood trying to fit in, your adult life trying to stand out