Decline And Fall Of The Business Memes [Marketing]

There's no time like a recession to reassert the conventional economic wisdom that making money is harder than those guys on cable pretend. Viral marketing was huge in the mid-90's before the dotcom bubble burst and everyone realized that eyeballs didn't necessarily translate into dollars. It was only a matter of time before the next spate of counterintuitive pop business theorists — from — were doused with the cold waters of cash flow. What's so interesting about this latest cycle of backlash and disillusionment, though, is that the assailants are almost all former apostles turned heretics. After the jump, the spats and surprisingly friendly debates about whether the new memes of trendsetting will remain trendy for very long. 1. The Tipping Point Tipped Over. Thesis/Antithesis: Network theory scientist Duncan Watts, who left... [read full story]