In one of my recent speeches, I applied Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point principles to conclude that we are at or approaching this point for the mobile internet, and are on the verge of explosive growth. He extracted his principles from looking at the conditions driving the spread of viruses, and applied them to new businesses and other social phenomena.

The three principles are:

1. Law of the Few: There is power in the individual on a stand-alone basis, rather than relying on a large group
2. Stickiness Factor: Once “infected”, the “virus” would stay locked in. Many web 2.0 services spend a great deal of energy creating stickiness in their strategies
3. Power of Context: Other external factors that will enhance or defeat the”virus”

Thanks to Esme Vos, I saw this thoughtful post-mortem on the demise of Meetro.com, and realized it was an interesting test of the tipping point principles. This was a site that displayed locations and profiles of “friends” on their mobile devices.

Of Malcolm Gladwell’s three principles to drive viral growth, I suspect Meetro scored very well on #2 and was about to score well on #3, but fell down on #1.

It was difficult to develop #1. Law of the Few because no individual could benefit from the service himself; it required large numbers of members to be effective. I suspect by the profile that Meetro did well with #2. Stickiness Factor, by providing a broad range of functions and services to members, once connected. And unfortunately Meetro died before it could benefit from the explosive growth of Web-enabled mobile devices (such as the iPhone, which would have enhanced #3. Power of Context. As Paul Bragiel points out in his post, there might still be a brilliant future for this service, perhaps provided by a company that can already deliver a large network of users, thus delivering on principle #1.

I wonder how many VCs are doing Tipping Point strategic analyses of startups, in addition to creating stacks of discounted cash flow projections? It would seem to be worthwhile.