First Half of Chapter 2

Gladwell begins this chapter by discussing a young boy going and telling Paul Revere that he had heard a British army officer say "hell pay tomorrow." Revere was finally convinced that the British were going to do something bad- in this case the march to Lexington, making Revere do his midnight a ride. When the British arrived in Concord, they were greeted with a colonial militia, which started the American Revolution. This particular case is an example of a word of mouth epidemic. Gladwell continues by saying that word of mouth is one of the most important means of communication today. We are heavily influenced by others, which is why we spend money, like going to certain stores or movies, on places our friends/peers have recommended to us. He points out that just that isn't enough to make a particular business successful. "Why is it that some ideas and trends and messages 'tip' and others don't?" For Revere, his message spread like wildfire, however, William Dawes had the same message at the same time, yet his message wasn't deemed as successful as Revere's.
In the next part of the chapter, Gladwell talks about a psychologist named Stanley Milgram who wanted to figure out how are humans connected. What Milgram did was he found the names of 160 people in Omaha and mailed each one of them a packet. The packet had the name of a stockbroker in Boston and Milgram told those 160 people to send this packet to others who would get it closer and closer to the stockbroker. What Milgram wanted to do was find out all the people the packet went through in order to get to the stockbroker. It took only five steps to get there; Gladwell states that because of this experiment, we now get the concept of six degrees of separation. This doesn't mean that everyone is literally linked together in only six steps, "it means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few."
But what does any of this have to do with business? I think the point Gladwell, at this point, is trying to get across is that word of mouth is honestly one of the most important things for a business to get customers. Gladwell is trying to figure out why some are more successful in getting people to listen and follow through with what he or she is saying and why some are not.
Gladwell begins talking about how all your friends link together in some way or another, but I'm not so sure what it really has to do with anything.He had made a list of 250 people's surnames and gave it around and asked if anyone knew anyone with those last names. I think Gladwell is just trying to get the point across that we're all connected in one way or another, but I'm not sure how this relates back to business.
I like this book and I know it's not really about business, but sometimes I can relate what he is saying to being about business and other times I really don't see exactly what he's trying to prove and it's a little frustrating.