Twitter Trends Help Researchers Forecast Viral Memes
Scientific American: Mind and Brain
What makes a meme-- an idea, a phrase, an image--go viral? For starters, the meme must have broad appeal, so it can spread not just within communities of like-minded individuals but can leap from one community to the next. Researchers, by mining public Twitter data, have found that a meme's "virality" is often evident from the start. After only a few dozen tweets, a typical viral meme (as defined by tweets using a given hashtag) will already have caught on in numerous communities of Twitter users. In contrast, a meme destined to peter out will resonate in fewer groups.
[More]
Original Article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=twitter-trends-help-researchers-forecast-viral-memes
No comments:
Post a Comment