Cluetrain Day 7: Hyperlinks Subvert Hierarchy
February 8, 2011
This post is part of a 95 post series discussing the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto as they relate to business in 2011. Check out the rest of the series!
Thesis #7: Hyperlinks Subvert Hierarchy
To subvert is to “Undermine the power and authority of (an established system or institution).” Think about that for a second. The hyperlinked network (any hyperlinked network) can undermine (or overcome) the power of a typical command and control hierarchical structure. That’s simply amazing. To say that it’s more critical now that organizations heed the hyperlinks and build their web of connections while breaking down the silos is misleading. That’s been happening for years, and it’s been an important part of how markets work since there were markets.
Hierarchy in organizations, save for the military, is largely a façade or construct that while solid in appearance on the outside, is really just a container for the real hyperlinked organization beneath.
Strength of Weak Ties
Granovetter’s 1973 paper "The Strength of Weak Ties", published in the American Journal of Sociology was one of the first popular academic papers that points to just how important the hyperlinks are that link us together as humans. "The Strength of Weak Ties", generally states that in marketing or politics, weak ties enable reaching populations and audiences that are not accessible via strong ties. The concepts in the paper have significant implications for job seekers and resource seekers who may not find their next opportunity through direct friends (strong ties) but through a friend of a friend (or a friend of that friend), or ‘weak ties’.
Humans and Hyperlinks
When it comes to making sense of how ‘hyperlinks subvert hierarchy’ matters to the every day marketer, the phrase is a bit of a double entendre, so to speak. On one hand, it certainly means that in the digital world, it is the hyperlinked nature of the internet that makes it so powerful and able to circumvent the establishment, no matter how hard they try to control information. The power of social networks in the current Egypt uprising is a perfect example, in spite of Malcolm Gladwell’s belief that "Weak ties seldom lead to high risk activism.", that the hyperlinked social networks are a powerful factor in subversion of hierarchy.
“Despite Gladwell’s disinterest, the courage of protesters in China (over the suppression of the Nobel prize winner Lui Xiaobo), Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan, to face violence and then share their story using social media is important because of the scalable connectivity it enables. While Gladwell is right to assert that social media is largely used to exchange trivial information, it is a mistake to limit its transformative potential to the worst excesses of its current practice, denying that technology and the dynamics it enables will mature and grow along with its users, especially in dramatic circumstances such as the protests in Egypt.”
For marketers, there’s another kind of hyperlink that really matters and it’s the hyperlinks between people, before they even hit the keyboard and get chatty on social networks. In fact, in the same Fast Company article mentioned above, Gladwell supports the position of just how important the human hyperlinks are in society.
"Surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another. Please. People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the Internet came along."
Gladwell is right…and Fast Company is right. Make no mistake, I’m of ‘one mind’ on this. The hyperlinks among us are crucial to forming and growing the customer base of an organization. It’s called word of mouth. Which brings me to the digital hyperlinks. If they hyperlinks within your audience, whether they currently meet in the street, at conferences, online or in your own building are of any importance, then social media should matter to you. Digital communication should matter to you and hyperlinks should be top of mind for you when planning your marketing, your corporate communications and anything else that the hierarchy (management) would like to see accomplished!