You Know More People Than You Think

N E W   Y O R K, Jan. 23 -- That friend of yours who has 300 phone numbers listed in her PDA might be more than a social-butterfly — she could be a "Connector."

What makes someone a Connector? According to Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, a connector is someone who knows an impressive number of people.

"There are a small number of people in any group, in any community who knows many more people than the average people knows," Gladwell said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "They make the phone calls, they are connected to the different worlds and they make a big difference."

In his book Gladwell explores ideas about how products, messages and behaviors spread like viruses do. Connectors, according to Gladwell, are individuals who help to extend information and trends throughout our society.

Gladwell sites Paul Revere as an example of a classic Connector. "Paul Revere went for his ride and so did somebody else — but he wasn't a Connector," Gladwell said. The townspeople of Boston reacted to Revere's warning because he was an incredibly popular and social guy who knew a lot of people, he said.

How can you pin down the Connectors of the world? Gladwell relies on a simple test of his own design.

Gladwell gives individuals from different groups a list of random surnames from the phonebook. Each person gets one point for every surname they spot that belongs to someone they know.

Gladwell has given this test to at least a dozen groups. One was a freshman World Civilizations class at City College in New York City. The students were all in their late teens or early 20s, some of them recent immigrants to America. The average score in that class was 20.96, meaning that the average person in the class knew about 21 people with the same last names as the people on the list.

Gladwell also gave the test to a group of health educators in their 40s and 50s at a conference in Princeton, N.J. Their average score was 39. When he gave the test to a relatively random sample of his own friends, mostly journalists and professionals in their late 20s and 30s, the average score was 41.