On Facebook, a small number of leaders are responsible for therapid expansion of information through followerss, according to a study carried out by the Stern School of Business (New York). In addition, people over 30 years of age are more influential, and men are drawn more by women than among themselves.
The way in which ideas, opinions and attitudes spread through the population has sparked much debate among researchers. For example, if a teenager who is part of the ‘popular’ group in your class buys an iPhone, and soon after everyone else starts to buy it, you don’t know ifThis behavior is due to the popularity of the boy or the susceptibility of otherstowards the new product. However, testing these ideas is difficult, since social experiments in laboratories are expensive and the recreated situations are often highly artificial.
Now, sociologists have found a good field of study with the analysis of social networks, since they allow to study large amounts of people and data in a simple and cheap way. In this case, the researchers used a Facebook application that allows users to rate and recommend movies. When someone recommends a movie, the app posts a random selection of your Facebook contacts. The more friends subscribe to the application after receiving the notification, the greater the influence of the user. In addition, the shorter the time between the receipt of the notification and the acquisition of the application, the greater the susceptibility of the friend who has received it.
In 44 days, the apps of some 8,000 new users sent some 40,000 notifications to 1.3 million friends, 1,000 of whom subscribed after receiving them. With these data, the authors built a ‘contagion model’ that they have published in the journalScience. The results indicate that, for example,those over 30 are more influential than young people, and people of the same age influence each other more. Men are more susceptible to women than to each otherand, furthermore, influence and susceptibility never occur in the same person. That is, either you are a leader, or you are a follower.
The division between these roles can have a lot of influence on marketingon line, since it can allow you to predict, not only if you are going to be interested in a certain product, but also if you are the type of person who can help make it viral.
