I recently finished reading "The Tipping Point" and I came away from it wondering if Scoble is a connector? The ability of a popular blogger to create a memetic epidemic seems plausible. Especially if they are connected to other connectors. Are bloggers influential just because they are widely read? If Scoble says "read this book", will you read it? Well, I read "The Tipping Point" after I read about it on someone's blog and I've ordered quite a few other books from Amazon after reading about them in various blogs lately. I don't think this in itself is enough to cause a global epidemic. But the impact of this "word of mouth" promotion of new technologies is something I can imagine.

 

A very small example that surprised me, was a few months ago when I installed Taskline and mentioned it on my blog. Since then the guys at Taskline tell me they've received a number of downloads of their software from my blog post. No epidemic yet, but who knows who else will read that blog entry and post on it themselves.

 

At the moment there are lots of bloggers talking about new products like LookOut. By the way, I installed LookOut last week on my laptop and it rocks. It's the fastest way I've found to search through my mail.