Small ideas, big companies

A small quote of the introduction of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, to illustrate how rumours, epidemics, buzz, or however you call it, can work.

Have you ever thought about yawning, for instance? Yawning is a surprisingly powerful act. Just because you read the word “yawning” in the previous two sentences - and the two additional “yawns” in this sentence - a good number of you will probably yawn within the next few minutes. Even as I’m writing this, I’ve yawned twice. If you’re reading this in a public place, and you’ve just yawned, chances are that a good proportion of everyone who saw you yawn is now yawning too, and a good proportion of the people watching the people who watched you yawn are now yawning as well, and on and on, in an ever-widening, yawning circle.

Yawning is incredibly contagious. I made some of you reading this yawn by simply writing the word “yawn.”

And so on…

I was in the train reading this and tried to yawn to see how people reacted. Two of them who saw/heard me yawned too.

This post got me tired…*yawns*

Create a “Twimp My Ride” website, providing people with cool Twitter templates, in order to promote the famous “Pimp My Ride” show.