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the great mystery is how those shoes went from something worn by a few fashion-forward downtown Manhattan hipsters to being sold in malls across the country. What was the connection between the East Village and Middle America? The Law of the Few says the answer is that one of these exceptional people found out about the trend, and through social connections and energy and enthusiasm and personality spread the word about Hush Puppies just as people like Gaeten Dugas and Nushawn Williams were able to spread HIV.12

Gladwell’s law of the few is catnip to marketers and businessmen and community organizers and just about anyone else in the business of shaping or manipulating people. And it’s easy to see why. If you can just find these special people and influence them, their connections and energy and enthusiasm and personality would be put to work for you. It’s a plausible-sounding story, and yet as with so many appealing ideas about human behavior, the law of the few turns out to be more a matter of perception than reality.

THE INFLUENCERS

The culprit again is common sense. As marketing consultants Ed Keller and Jon Berry argue, “Some people are better connected, better read, and better informed. You probably know this from your own experience. You don’t turn to just anyone when you’re deciding what neighborhood to live in, how to invest for retirement, or what kind of car or computer to buy.”13 As a description of our perceptions, this statement is probably accurate—when we think about what we’re doing when we seek out information, access, or advice, it does indeed seem that we focus on some people over others. But as I’ve already discussed, our perceptions of how we behave are far from a perfect reflection of reality. A number of studies, for example, have suggested that social influence is mostly subconscious, arising out of subtle cues that we receive from our friends and neighbors, not necessarily by “turning to them” at all.14 Nor is it clear that when we are influenced in these other, less conscious ways, we recognize that we have been influenced. Employees, for example, may well influence their bosses as much as their bosses influence them, but they are not equally likely to name each other as sources of influence—simply because bosses are supposed to be influential, whereas employees are not. In other words, our perceptions of who influences us may say more about social and hierarchical relations than influence per se.

One of the most confusing aspects of the influencer debate, in fact, is that no one can really agree on who the influencers are in the first place. Originally the term referred to “ordinary” people who just happened to exert extraordinary influence over their friends and neighbors. But in practice all sorts of people are referred to as influencers: media giants like Oprah Winfrey; gatekeepers like Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue; celebrity actors and socialites; popular bloggers; and so on. All of these people may or may not be influential in their own way, but the kind of influence they exert varies tremendously. Oprah Winfrey’s advocacy of an unknown book, for example, may dramatically improve its chances of appearing on the bestseller lists, but that is mostly because her individual influence is magnified enormously by the media empire that she runs. Likewise, a fashion designer might be well advised to have a famous actress arrive at the Oscars wearing his dress, but that is again because her arrival is being recorded, broadcast, and commented upon by the mass media. And when a popular blogger expresses his enthusiasm for a particular product, potentially thousands of people read his opinion. But is his or her influence analogous to that of an Oprah endorsement, a personal recommendation from a friend, or something else?

Even if we narrow down the problem to direct, interpersonal influence of the kind that excludes the media, celebrities, and bloggers of the world, measuring influence is a lot more difficult than simply measuring the