on the other side of the debate, some argue that influencers have no such effect and therefore companies shouldn’t target their seeding efforts on a specific group of people. duncan watts and peter dodds examined the phenomenon through a computer network simulation under the assumption that influential people are more difficult to influence, therefore social hubs have a lower tendency to adopt new products. their work suggests that highly connected individuals do not play a crucial role in influencing others and that a random individual is just as likely to start a trend as connected people.