Warning: Blogs Can Be Infectious

"'There is a lot of speculation that really important people are highly connected, but really, we wonder if the highly connected people just listen to the important people,' said Lada Adamic, one of the four researchers working on the project. These findings are important to sociologists who are interested in learning how ideas grow from isolated topics into full-blown epidemics that "infect" large populations. Such an understanding is also important to marketers, who hope to be able to pitch products and ideas directly to the most influential people in a given group."