The ghost of Malcolm Gladwell has come to haunt Silicon Valley tastemakers. You know those schwag-bags you're always hearing about on Defamer? It's all part of massaging the 'Connectors,' the folks of style and influence who supposedly have more to do with wildfire word-of-mouth sales than the rest of us schmucks.

The latest effort is to identify techies and tech journos who's off-hand endorsement of a product can mean an explosion in market share. Bloggerstars Joi Ito, Om Malik and Dan Gillmor (who, we are to assume, are all on the list) seem worried that lots of undisclosed endorsements could help further undermine what ethical legitimacy the blogosphere has. The description on creator Auren Hoffman's consulting enterprise Stonebrick is rather crytpic: "The Silicon Valley 100 is operated by the Stonebrick Group and is currently a stealth project." Oooh, stealth!

We don't really know if this is off to an auspicious start -- the first product that will be sent, unsolicited, to the list is the Brondell Swash, a high-tech toilet seat (not that SFist doesn't want a shot at reviewing it!). Of course, we did add Ito, Malik and Gillmor to our blogroll specifically for recommendations in the bidet department. "Hey, have you heard about that new Brondell Swash 600? I was reading on this one blog that it was really sweet!"