Mitch Lieberman wrote a terrific post today titled "Social Just Is". I highly recommend reading it, not only because it makes sense. One can sense this is a post straight from the heart - of the authentic kind. Mitch also quoted a small part of Graham Hill's latest post "A Manifesto for Social Business". The quote:

From Individual Customers…to Networks of Customers

The emphasis for business today is still on managing customers as individuals. But we have evolved as social animals with highly developed and highly influential social networks. For example, research by Christakis & Fowler suggests that we are highly influenced by three degrees of influence – friends, friends’ friends and friends’ friends’ friends. It’s not about ‘influencers’ per se, but the social networks in which influence happens. If we are to be successful in Social Business we must recognise the power of customers’ social networks to shape customers’ behaviour.

Just a few minutes after I finished reading Mitch's article I read an Harvard Business Publishing article on social networks by Rosabeth Moss Kanter. She makes a very compelling case about the real power in companies and organisations lies with people who know people:

This is why connectors with big networks have so much power.

Please read the article " On Twitter and in the Workplace, It's Power to the Connectors"

What do you think? Does it make sense to try and identify the Connector and not the Influencer? Must we not only recognize the power of social networks but more so the power of Connectors to shape customers's behaviour? (And if so, where do you want to be at Klout ;-)