First Follower idea is all yours

As posted on Sivers' blog:<p>Yes, indeed, it is ours - I first heard it back in June 2009, on Seth Godin's blog. It got posted up on Hacker News too.<p>Here's the seth post of the same video, making the same post (though he reckons guy #3 is more important than the first follower):<p><a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/guy-3.html" rel="nofollow">http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/guy-3.html</a>

I think Sivers is trying to prove the point that his idea will only become a movement after the first follower joins him. Tricky.

I saw the dancing video before and it was hilarious, though that guy was dancing for a loonnng time before the first follower came along, and there were people came in on and off in between. He had to struggle for a while before it became a movement. But the First Follower idea is very insightful.

I think it is actually quite old. Seth Godin or somebody like that might have blogged about the dancing guy about a year ago? So definitely to late to become the "First Follower Guy".<p>OK not too late - but where is the fun in taking somebodies meme?

You can see that right here. First few votes make a submission die or get to the front page. And then it's just momentum.<p>IMHO, this is detrimental to quality and doesn't fend off bandwagon bias.

It will be interesting how this maps to Open Source. Github has "followers" explicitly. In open source, is the "first contributer" more important? Lots of interesting intersections..

You mean be a leader of the first follower movement?

It's a good story, Seth posted about it too a while back.<p>The problem like with Gladwell's "Tipping Point" and "Blink" is that they sound actionable but aren't really.