Reflective Writing: Chapter 2

In Chapter two, the author Malcolm Gladwell talks about the "Law of the Few." He goes into great detail about three different types of people, Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen who help to spread social epidemics. He started off by giving an example of a word of mouth epidemic. Paul Revere's message that the British were coming tipped while William Dawes' message didn't. Gladwell illistrated how this was a real life situation of the "Law of the Few." He also talked about the six degrees of seperation experiment which showed how a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps. I found Gladwell's research on Connectors very interesting. He stated that Connectors are people with a special gift for bringing the world together. These types of people such as Paul Revere and Roger Horchow find it very easy to make a lot of friends. The author also talks about the "strength of weak ties" to further elaborate his research on Connectors. He states that a lot of our connections with people are made through acquaintances, not close friends. I can attest to this because I was able to get my current summer job through an acquaintance in my hometown. I don't know the man very well, but it backs up the research done by Gladwell that 56 percent of people only see their contact occasionally.