Trends and Tipping Point

When I read the 2010 US Digital Year in Review, I was expecting Facebook to be a big part in it but I was surprised to find it play an even bigger part in the review. The review shows a lot of trends that could be considered new due to the recent developments of various social media websites. For example, Facebook was not even on the list for the top 10 most visited websites a few years ago. Now, it is in the top three of the most visited websites and its user has reached more than 800 million users worldwide. There are so many trends that has only been invoked by the creation of Facebook.

I was baffled by how fast a trend could spread and how readily people accept it as evidenced by the astounding increase in the number of people who use Facebook. There are a lot of interesting trends in the review but one that I find the most interesting is the fact that the usage of email has declined in the past few years in almost all age groups due to maybe the development of more convenient modes of communication. I find this to be very interesting because, all this time, I thought that email has been the primary means of email advertising and would surely be that way for many years to come. I guess this period in time really is the dawn of a new beginning for many industries that is invoked by the evolution of the way we communicate.

The book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell offers a very interesting hypothesis on the subject of trend itself. While trends have been known to be very difficult and sometimes impossible to predict, he states that there are certain factors and patterns that determines and plays a role in making a trend influential. He also likened a trend to an epidemic -- of an idea -- that could spread instantly and could disappear almost as fast with just the smallest change. I could immediately tie back the concept to the trends I just saw, how big a difference a year could make and how something that is literally unknown be "the next biggest thing" in the space of a year.

Gladwell also states that this concepts applies to various fields as he demonstrated in his case studies. The case studies are quite varied, ranging from business to social issues. The topics for his case studies are interesting and could instantly connect to real life situations. All in all I think the book itself is very interesting as it tries to explain a subject that is very unpredictable in a context that everyone understands.

I also find the name of the book itself to be very fitting as it "comes from the world of epidemiology. It's the name given to that moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass. It's the boiling point. It's the moment on the graph when the line starts to shoot straight upwards."