Grouped is a book by Paul Adams on social interactions. It explains how we’re connected to each other, how we communicate with each other and how we influence each other. Using research findings on social interactions, Paul Adams provides actionable items for marketing people on how to communicate their brands using social networks. Here are some interesting bits from the book:

• We communicate with the same 5 to 10 people 80 percent of the time.
• Products that are visible and accessible will be talked about more. Giving people the full product to try can lead to a 20 percent increase in conversations about that product.
• A researcher at Microsoft analyzed 30 billion instant messaging conversations on MSN and concluded that, on average, we are all connected through 6.6 people.
• On average, people have 160 friends on Facebook yet communicate directly with only four to six of them. People with more than 500 friends on Facebook often have a hard time figuring out who some of the people are.
• In a study of 74 milion tweets, only a few dozen generated a thousand retweets. Twitter users with the most followers do not necessarily have the greatest number of retweets or mentions. Instead of looking for overly influential people, businesses should look for regular people who are likely to be interested in what they have to say. Targeting large numbers of these people is more likely to spread ideas than trying to find a small number of influential individuals.
• People eating with one other person eat 35 percent more than they eat at home. People eating in a party of four eat 75 percent more. If your friends are happy, you’re more likely to be happy.
• Research on amazon.com found that people don’t give things objective reviews and ratings; they tend to give the same ratings as other people have given before them.
• If someone gives us somethings, we have a natural desire to give something in return at some point in the future.
• When faced with many choices, people often can’t make a decision and walk away from all the choices. When P&G reduced the number of Head & Shoulders products from 26 to 15, they saw a 10 percent increase in sales.
• When you add a new product line, remove an older one. Apple basically only sells four things: Macs, iPods, iPads and iPhones.
• People are much more likely to vote for the first candidate on the ballot than someone in the middle or at the end because they are primed to think of a list of people as a leaderboard.
• People are much more likely to buy meat that is labeled 85 percent lean than meat that is labeled 15 percent fat.
• People tend to avoid extremes and make choices that are intermediate between what they need at a minimum and what they can possibly spend at a maximum.

Overall it’s a fantastic read full of interesting research findings that are actionable.