The Six Degrees of Separation should not be a new concept to any of us but the Three Degrees of Influence rule may be unfamiliar territory.  James Fowler of the University of California San Diego and Nicholas Christakis of the Harvard School of Public Health (authors of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives) have extensively analyzed data from the Framington Heart Study to research the social connections of its participants and their impact on the particpants’ life decisions.  This research gave rise to the Three Degrees of Influence rule. The basic idea of the rule is that everything we say or do has an effect on our friends (first degree), our friend’s friends (second degree), and our friend’s friend’s friends (third degree). The first three degrees are the most influential on our own decisions and the people in our lives beyond those degrees provide very little impact on our life choices.

“So many things we normally think of as individualistic — like what our body size is, or what we think about a political topic, or whether we are happy — are actually collective phenomena,” says Christakis. For example, in their research Fowler and Christakis found that if a person is obese there is a 50% chance their closest friend is obese, a 20% chance of a friend of a friend being obese, and a 10% chance that a friend of a friend of a friend is obese. 

So what can this mean for Web 2.0 marketers who are using social media and online social networks to get word out about their brand? According to both Fowler and Christakis there is no real difference between face to face friends and virtual friends.  People meet in niche social network sites, customer review sites, forums, etc. to gather information and to help them form opinions and make decisions. Through communication on these sites people build influencial relationships where the Three Degrees of Influence rule may apply.

Throwing a message out into the universe and relying on word of mouth is not enough anymore. Targeting social media and those who are influential in the realm of social media should have a positive impact on how your message is received and how your brand is perceived. Those who have the most friends online are more likely to have the most friends offline as well according to a study that will be published next year in the American Behavioral Scientist journal. Those who have read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point can recognize these influencial people as “connectors” who “link us up with the world” and “have a special gift for bringing the world together” and realize the value they can add to a business.