Pillars of the New Influence by David Armano | Harvard Business Review
Two years ago, I found myself taking a crash course on influence, advocacy and online behavior. We had taken in a family in need and leveraged the web, specifically Twitter, Paypal, a blog, and most importantly, our real social network, to raise nearly seventeen thousand dollars for the family.The velocity of the effort — nearly twelve thousand dollars was raised in less than twenty four hours — was amazing and made me realize that the old model of a few people controlling information and distribution is giving way to a new, highly distributed, individually empowering system that leverages social media. In this case, I had enough influence and trust with my core network to create a ripple effect that spread to other networks, which were transformed into advocates for the family. This is the new, emerging model of influence.