Dangerous Ideas: Anatomy of a Cascade

Over the long weekend the Festival of Dangerous Ideas ran various sessions on topics that were controversial in society. I attended the Christian Lander session on ‘Stuff White People Like’. Lander is the successful blogger and author of Stuff White People Like. Although the conversation navigated its way through the issues of race, what interested me the most was the story behind Lander’s success. He is very specific about significant dates in his journey to success.
On January 18th 2008 Lander comes up with the idea and begins to blog. On January 28th 2008 he sends it to friends of his, and in turn they forward it on to their friends. As a result traffic to his blog increases. On February 16th 2008 he is contacted by a literary agent. Then on February 26th 2008 Lander is contacted by talent agents. Bearing in mind during this time traffics at the blog site still continues to grow. On March 31st 2008 Lander signs a book deal and given 30 days to write the book. On July 1st 2008 the book is released and on July 14th the book Stuff White People Like is a New York Times best seller.

This trajectory is very impressive, particularly at the speed that it all happens. It is possible to map this example of success through the framework of Duncan Watts’ theory of thresholds and cascades. Christian Lander may be viewed as the innovator as author of the blog (2003:235). Lander makes it clear that he is a node connected with few other nodes. When Lander initially forwards his blog to approximately 25 friends, or nodes, he notes that they are PHD students who have little influence, however they can be viewed as the early adopters (Watts, 2003:235). These early adopters are also weakly connected, however they do have bridges across to other vulnerable nodes in other clusters, in which they pass on the blog to. It is apparent that this process continues as the traffic at the blog continues to grow at a rapid rate. The ‘seed’ that Lander has planted sprouts and grows quickly into a strong tree as the blog transcends the blogosphere and becomes a book. Or as Watts describes it, the idea or innovation has percolated (2003:235). With the combination of the blog and book, this pushes the idea past the threshold and clearly cascades as it becomes a best seller on the NY Times list.

If you have a desire to view Christian Lander tell this story in his own words, here is a great video.

Watts, D (2003) ‘Thresholds, cascades and predictability’ in Six Degrees: the science of a connected age, NY and London: Norton, pp 220 – 252.