13 Dec 2007, Posted by Matthew Reinbold in Dev Marketing,Thought & Theory, 1 Comments

Are You Just a Connector or a Voltron?

If an idea is powerful, unique, or lucky enough people plant it in their fertile imaginations. Aggregate and watch what’s blooming in people’s attention (as represented by what they’re talking, searching, creating about) and its becomes easy to see which memes are flowering. (For a short cut, there’s a whole set of algorithms set up on a site called [appropriately enough] Techmeme that does most of the weeding for you.) As Twitter captured the collective attention on Tuesday (not for the first time) I went casting about looking for the idea of impetus.

Turns out plenty of others had already beaten me to it. But perhaps more valuable than knowing the source is looking at the derived analysis. Dave Armano, who writes the always solid Logic + Emotion Blog, came up with this graphic in his discussion on what happened Tuesday.

The picture illustrates the different influencers in social networks. His point is that the idea originator, Jeremiah Owyang, had such an impact because he represents a combination of all three types. Or, Tuesday’s flowering of Twitter tattle was because of a social media Voltron.

Everyone possesses the ability to be any of those parts – connector, maven, or salesman – to various degrees. However, to be able to engage in each with equal aplomb is impressive and rare. If you’re hoping to have a wide influence do you have all three skill sets? Can you acquire either them or the people with them if you don’t? The answers to those questions are going to be increasingly more important as we shift from a scarcity based economy to an attention based one.