I found The Tipping Point to be an extremely interesting non-fiction book. It was solely based off of the reasons why certain ideas and trends become popular and successful, where other ideas never break through. Within the book, the author Gladwell talked about how people can help a brand or company bring it to the attention of the masses. I found this particular part riveting because there are so many different ways to get the word out about a new product or idea. There are people that persistently research the product until their talk about it spreads to people. Another type of person that spreads the word are connectors. These people do not necessarily know much about the product, but they have a lot of connections and love being social. These are the people that get the word out to the most people. The other type of person is the “salesmen”. These people convince us to buy something when we are skeptical as consumers. All three of these types of people are essential to companies and businesses in order to grow and become a force within the consumer market.
The book is also a great insight into how people socially work. The sociology of people and the spreading of ideas is so complex and amazing, yet it happens without us thinking about it. Fads come and go – like Beanie Babies, Hush Puppies, Furby, and hundreds of types of bracelets. All of these things come and go. They fulfill a need that the consumer has – whether it is because of how popular it is or how useful the product will actually be. Products are able to take the world by storm, and the idea of the tipping point could not be any more perfect when we apply it to our society. For example, Hush Puppies shoes used to be popular but went out of style. Once the fad ended, they were only sold in small local stores that were not well known at all. A group of kids decided that these shoes were suddenly cool to wear again, and it quickly boomed across the country and gave every kid another fad to cling on to. Beanie Babies were extremely popular when I was growing up. They served nothing but filling a case full of stuffed animals and giving kids a chance to compete with each other about who had more or who had the newest animal.
In the world we live in today, small things can quickly become phenomenas. This book may not completely explain why things become popular, but it does give us reasoning and how things get to where they get within society. It was a very easy read and went by quickly for the amount of ideas it covered. I would recommend this book to anyone who is thoroughly interested in sociology and how humans work within their ability to communicate. I truly did enjoy this book and I learned a lot about the tendencies of people and their need to be caught up in the latest trends and fashions.
Elizabeth Beisel 