Beyond Influencers: Social Network Properties and Viral Marketing

psychology of social media

Beyond Influencers: Network Properties and Viral Marketing

Prepared byDavid C. Evans Ph.D.

Psychster Inc.1.15.2009

Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.

“A Metapattern…is the discarding of magnitudes in favor of shapes, patterns, and relations.”

Gregory Bateson, Cambridge Sociologist, in Mind and Nature, 1979

“One system may have one or more variables, each of which varies comparably to a variable in another system.”

James Grier Miller, University of Chicago Psychologist, in Living Systems, 1978

Leveraging Biological Patterns to Understand Social Networks


Leveraging Biological Patterns to Understand Social Networks

“The more mechanical we make our fabricated environment, the more biological it will eventually have to be if it is to work at all.”

“The world of our own making has become so complicated that we must turn to the world of the ‘born’ to understand how to manage it.”

“Ancient metaphors…of a machine as organism and an organism as machine are as old as the first machine itself. But now those enduring metaphors are no longer poetry. They are becoming real – profitably real.”

Kevin Kelly, Executive Editor of WIRED, in Out of Control, 1994


The Network Metapattern

Network Property Brain Social Media Epidemic Airline Electrical Gridnumber of nodes neurons people people destinations generating

stations & customers

number of connections

number of synapses

number of “influence channels”

number of contacts


number of transmission lines

strength of signal intensity of impulse

appeal of content reproduction rate of virus

capacity of aircraft

voltage

strength of connections

thickness of axons

intimacy of friendships

intimacy of contacts

frequency of flights to a

given destination

current capacity & resistance

threshold to fire threshold of sodium channels

likelihood to forward

likelihood of infection

percent of connections

made

uptime of distributors


The Network Metapattern

Network Property Brain Social Medianumber of nodes neurons people


number of synapses



appeal of content (open rate)


thickness of axons




12

3

4


Six Degrees of Separation



number of synapses



appeal of content


thickness of axons




“The mean number of intermediaries observed in this study was somewhat greater than five…additional research indicates this value is quite stable.”

Travers & Milgram. Sociometry, 1969

“A random pair of nodes in the Messenger network is 6.6 hops apart on the average.”

Leskovec & Horvitz. Microsoft Research, 2007


The Debate Over Influentials “If word of mouth is like a radio signal broadcast over the country, Influentials are the strategically placed transmitters that amplify the signal, multiplying dramatically the number of people who hear it.”

Keller & Berry, in The Influentials, 2003

“Cascades do not succeed because of a few highly influential individuals influencing everyone else, but rather on account of a critical mass of easily influenced individuals influencing other easy-to-influence people.

Watts & Dodds, JCR, 2007



number of synapses



appeal of content


thickness of axons




InfluentialsAverage


Design Examples – Strength of Signal



number of synapses



appeal of content


thickness of axons




Send from name not company Merge real names not profile names Ensure canned copy is conversational Appears 1:1 not 1:many Personal relevance.

http://www.cnnbcvideo.com/?referred_by=4998206-xqqLnqx&combined=David%20Evans&first=David&name_id=97072&last=Evans&id=&nid=LD_LotL4_t77NfanlzwjKDk3MDcy


Design Examples – Number of Connections



number of synapses



appeal of content


thickness of axons




Reveal friends of friends Import from address books Recommend likely acquaintances




number of synapses



appeal of content


thickness of axons




Design Examples – Strength of Connections

Ensure digital connections to have a real (biological) counterpart

Recommend making most likely sociological connections

Achieve goals.




number of synapses



appeal of content


thickness of axons




Design Examples – Threshold to Forward

Unify consuming and forwarding into the same action.

Reward forwarding with status.




number of synapses



appeal of content


thickness of axons




Design Examples – Threshold to Forward

Promoter

Consumer

Producer

Shift from targeting Influentials to cultivating Promoters.

Track top forwarders (recipients must open and forward on).

Associate them with artists.

“The tendency to ‘bask in reflected glory’ (BIRG) by publicly announcing one's associations with successful others.”

Robert Cialdini et al., ASU Psychologist, in JPSP, 1976


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