Who are idea starters?
An idea starter tends to be an individual who is highly engaged with digital and social media. They use social media as a platform to gather ideas and consume vast amounts of data. As a result they have an intricate network of online relationships but this is not necessarily a mass communications platform; the quality of relationships is at least, if not more important than the individual’s quantity of relationships. An idea starter is not necessarily the individual who has the ‘bright idea’ but they are the one who starts a conversational meme within the online topics of discussion. Just like planting a seed in the best possible environment, the meme experiences germination and growth within the community which reacts through engagement. Increasingly this happens around formalised but not walled communities. The idea is generally started via a blog, ezine or contribution to a forum. In Jeremiah Owyang’s Dow Jones White Paper on ‘Tracking the Influence of Conversation’, a meme was defi
