Image by fredcavazza via Flickr Gladwell is wrong. I will use Mark Schaefer's fairly succinct summary to explain Gladwell's argument about social media and activism: "Social media will not be the agent of social change that many say it will be because it is built on a network of weakly-connected links and lacks a central leadership structure. He compares the passive changes built on social networks with the risky and courageous acts needed to confront racism in the U.S. in the 1960s." I'll quote the end of Gladwell's piece where he takes Clay Shirky to task: "Shirky considers this model of activism an upgrade. But it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adapt...