Underlying the discussion of social networking is complicated mathematics and science. Most of you probably don’t care, but it helps to know that there is substance supporting the discussion.

First, let’s use an example.

Imagine that before a gig you take a box of guitar picks and dropped them to the floor. Instead of picking them up, you decide that you are going to play a game. (It’s 4 hours before the gig, so you’ve got time.) You take some string and start connecting the guitar picks together. You randomly choose two picks and connect them together with a piece of string. To win the game, you want to lift one pick off the floor and have all other picks come up.

When you first sit down, you will be connecting picks that aren’t tied to another pick. In fact, for the first several minutes, you will be connecting picks that are solitary. Something strange happens after a while. Soon you’ll start connecting picks that are tied to each other. After a while you’ll start connecting groups of picks to other groups, creating larger groups. Eventually, you will get to the point where a single pick is connected, through it’s subsequent ties, to every other pick in the group.

Here’s the important point - The second half of the game is significantly shorter than the first half. Once you start connecting groups of picks together, you rapidly connect all the picks.

Why on earth do you care about this?

Scientists use this to explain things like the spread of disease, computer viruses, STDs, and rumors. For a musician, this is the basic theory behind your fanbase. If you understand the science of how things are connected, you understand how to spread the word about your band, your music, your merch, and your shows. And, after a certain point in time, your fanbase grows very rapidly as you reach critical mass.

*(This analogy was adapted from Stuart Kauffman, Biologist)