Internet makes the network of market more decentralized. Yet, for marketers and media, they need to understand network structure better. They no longer can target few elephants (TV, grocery stores) for marketing channel. I will explain why with the clusters concept in network theory.
For content media to grow, they need to understand how information diffuses among a universal network or many clusters of social networks.
If we treat each person as a node on a network, the connections between people are not randomly distributed. There’s some sort of clustering/segregation at a local level.
The first graph below is a network with mini clusters. The second one is a random network. Human society tends to mirror the first one.
http://www.alcyonesystems.com/images/cluster_network_sm.jpg
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/mithrastheprophet/media/blog/2005/network-random.png.html
This implies that for content media to get things viral, they need to penetrate into different clusters. If all their spread get contained in a cluster, then their content doesn’t become viral at universal level.
