Rating: 
Summary: NOT WORTH THE TIME.
Review: I picked this one up and read the sleeve and said ok sounds great.
Unfortunately it was not as advertised.It seemed to be a mix of
news paper clippings and ramblings that were just simpley boring
and not very informative.You can pick up the paper and read the same thing for 25 cents.The person who wrote the sleeve has better writing skills.
Rating: 
Summary: Defining "The Snowball Effect;" a worthwhile read.
Review: THE TIPPING POINT starts out with the true tale of the resurgence of the dowdy shoe, the Hush Puppie. Yep, the Hush Puppie. Why? Specifically, to identify and explain the REASON for the shoe's resurgence; a resurgence that would find Hush Puppies embraced by fashion designers and the New York club scene.
In the mid-1990s, the Hush Puppie became so unpopular that Wolverine, its manufacturer, almost discontinued the line. However, just prior to pulling the trigger on discontinuation, the Hush Puppie suddenly became all the rage and the accessory of choice. Fashion designers including Isaac Mizrahi were seen wearing the shoes. The feeding frenzy for Hush Puppies grew at such an exponential level that Wolverine saw its sales quadruple in 1996. Was this meteoric rise due to an intensive or gimicky marketing effort by the company?. Not by a long shot. The truth: a few people began wearing the shoes in downtown Manhattan clubs...to be different...and viola', the trend was sparked. (If you want to understand the mathematics behind the concept (formulation) of the tipping point, read the endnote relative to the explanation on page 12. This provides an outstanding "definition.") This is the perfect example of how many of our societal trends begin - by a few people or a few small changes stimulating different actions by populations and sub-populations. These changes comprise the concept of THE TIPPING POINT. Gladwell uses examples like the Hush Puppies craze or the drop in New York City's crime rate to demonstrate his theory of the tipping point, or the moment when an idea, trend or social behavior crosses a certain threshold before it catches on. In other words, a very small change in a standard iteration that causes the activity or action to "snowball." What makes these things or ideas catch on is often a product of something much smaller than expected. The three rules Gladwell outlines for the reader defining the tipping point - the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context - show how a seemingly insignificant event or person can have a major effect. The "law of the few," for instance, shows that, as in the story of Paul Revere, it often takes just one person to start a movement. There are certain people in life who have a talent for bringing people together and disseminating information, and those people are often pivotal to making things happen. The "stickiness factor" is also critical - if something doesn't "stick" with people, it will never catch on. The "power of context" indicates that circumstances often affect how people behave and how well ideas or trends spread. Once again, it's often the smaller groups that affect big change.
Gladwell offers insight to a daily subject of society's subconcious and gives it a name, a definition and a scale to measure the effect. While he doesn't break new ground here, Gladwell has offered the reader insight and research into the wonderous and strange events that create "wildfires." Again, while this book will not provide any substantive education, it is a fascinating read relative to how events become events.
Rating: 
Summary: simple, intelligent and very relevent - a must read
Review: I've read many of Mr. Gladwell's articles from the New Yorker and I have to say he is one of the most intiutive, intelligent and compelling writer I've ever read. I am a marketing consultant and all the principles that Mr.Gladwell talks about is applicable in the marketing world. The beauty of the book is how relevent his message is in a social-economic context, business world and personal life. The principles (the power of context, stickiness factor and others) that Gladwell bases his theory on is fundamental to understanding the motivations and behavior of people, how little things can make a big difference and how to make a good idea a successful phenomenon. It is a must read for anyone who wants to understand human behavior and use it in a professional context - certainly very useful if you are an account planner/strategic insight person in an agency.
Rating:
Summary: Keep it short, please
Review: I wonder whether Internet surfing has done permanent damage to my patience as a book reader. Tipping point is a good book, and the idea that the author put forward is quite original and worth further exploration. It would deserve a 5 star rating if the author cut the length of the book by half, or more. I often had the urge to tell the author, when reading the book, "yes, I got the point, please move on!".
Rating: 
Summary: Contrived And Artifical
Review: Mr. Gladwell's ideas are really not all that original: many are based on old sociology academic work. He makes arguments without providing ample evidence to back them up(it seems they are really designed for sound bites) and the book has an artifical flavour.
Rating:
Summary: title says it all and then does it
Review: I have been teaching marketing for over 15 years and although most of the concepts espoused in the book are not original, I found the book to be extremely entertaining and useful in streamlining my views on this subject. Gladwell uses the concept of the diffusion of innovations to explain how ideas, trends, and even radical change in human behavior are spread by "little things." Taken to the extreme it leaves a feeling of helplessness since from a marketing standpoint no matter how good everything is, ultimately you have to reach the "tipping point" that could conceivably be as trivial as having that "right-looking" package. The book is not meant to be an academic treatise, and some of the other reviews that test it against that standard are missing the point. The book itself attests to the power of Gladwell's argument in that a catchy title is what is tipping the scale to spread an old idea and make it seemingly a new one.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating!
Review: The all subject is very interesting and Malcolm puts a great spin around it with lots of concrete examples. The overall principle exposed in the book is applicable to a lot of situations and the examples are very interesting findings around human behaviors. Although the story flow could be sometime more structured, the style is great and makes it very easy to read and very clear.
Rating:
Summary: A Startling Study of Social Epidemics
Review: What do the mid-90s Baltimore Syphilis epidemic and the much publicized drop in New York's crime rate have in common? What was the secret of Sesame Street's success in the late 60s, and why did everyone started wearing Hush Puppies in 95? Why are there more suicides per capita in the South Pacific island of Micronesia than anywhere else in the world, and why has teen smoking in the United States risen 73 percent since 1988? These and other fascinating social epidemics are discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in what is probably the most readable book on 'threshold models' in the world. Fascinating, concise and unputdownable, The Tipping Point has tipped itself into a much deserved international, best-selling first place.
Rating:
Summary: Socio-babble
Review: For the most part, I found this work (like many in the field of sociology) to be a collection of convenient observations masking itself as real scientific work.
Rating:
Summary: clever self-marketing at work
Review: This publisher is clearly benefiting from having a splash-page blurb -- I'm sure it's getting lots of clicks -- but take a careful look at the sample pages before you buy. We got suckered in -- what author doesn't want to know more about selling his or her own book? -- but there's really not much here. Buzz is one thing, but having a quality product to create a buzz about is even better. This book is a perfect example of the former without the latter. Without some sort of underlying substance, buzz is just a lot of noise. Save your money.
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