Online Social Networks Can Be Tipped By Less Than 1% of Their Population

An anonymous reader writes "A new algorithm developed by researchers at West Point seems to break new ground for viral marketing practices in online social networks. Assuming a trend or behavior that spreads in an online social network based on the classic 'tipping' model from sociology (based on the work of Thomas Schelling and Mark Granovetter), the new West Point algorithm can find a set of individuals in the network that can initiate a social cascade – a progressive series of 'tipping' incidents — which leads to everyone in the social network adopting the new behavior. The good news for viral marketers is that this set of individuals is often very small – a sample of the Friendster social network can be influenced when only 0.8% of the initial population is seeded. The trick is finding the seed set. The algorithm is described in a paper to be presented later this summer at the prestigious IEEE ASONAM conference."

Comments

Re:Wow, Friendster? All 300 Users?

[mcgrew]

Wrong. The inside of a Baptist church is no different than the inside of a Methodist church, and the sermons are likewise similar. The only thing that's different is the trappings; all of Christainity worship the same savior and are supposed to follow the same rules. It's no different than Ubuntu and Red Hat, both are Linux and use the same kernel.

Also, the GP's numbers are flawed (I looked it up a few weeks ao in response to a /. comment). He's overestimating the Hinus by a little, the Muslims by a little, and underestimating the number of Christians by a third. Over three billion people consider themselves Christian (even if few of them even attempt to follow Christ's teachings).

Oh, and when you don't capitalize Hindu or Muslim or Bhuddist or Christian, you're insulting millions or billions of people. We call that "flamebait" around here.