Reading Log 5

In this reading we learned mostly about salesmen. According to Gladwell a maven is an educator and an information gatherer not a pursader. Mavens gather the message, connectors spread it, and salesmen are the pursaders when people are not already convinced. Gladwell gave several examples to support his point. Gau is a financial broker who is very successful. Gau succeeds because he is an optimistic person and when people are around him they feel good and so they are more likely to trust him. Peter Jennings is a news caster for ABC news. Mondale and Mullen did a study and found that people who watch ABC voted more for the republicans because when Jennings mentioned the republican candidates he was energetic and animated.

Tipping Reading Log 3

In this reading log the author continued to talk about connectors. He talked about how most people have a small social circle and when they go looking for new jobs they generally get information from their acquaintances. This makes sense because most of your close friends occupy the same social circle that you do and so they would probably know about the same information as you do. Your acquaintances by definition are people who you know only slightly and are not in your immediate social network. Therefore they are more likely to know about new things that you have not already learned about. The reason why Paul Revere was successful in getting his message across that the British were coming was that he knew a lot of people, he had lots of acquaintances. When he rode into a village he knew exactly which doors to know on. He knew who were the militia leaders of the village and Paul Revere was respected, so people would listen to his advice. Dawes most likely stopped in the same number of villages but he did not have the social connections, and therefore his message did not reach enough people to tip.