SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Going Viral Takes a Posse, Not an Army
from Science News
When it comes to going viral online, it's not how many people you know but who they are, a new study suggests. An analysis of the social networking tool Twitter concludes that having a lot of followers isn't as important to Internet exposure as having discriminating followers to pass the message on.
The results suggest that those trying to communicate through social networking, be they politicians, advertising executives or philanthropic organizations, shouldn't focus their efforts on targeting the masses. Target the influential, and the masses will come.
"It's not only the numbers, the quantity of your audience, but also the quality of your audience," says study coauthor Wojciech Galuba, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
Read more...
Science in the Media
Newspapers:
Magazines and Web Sites:
The Science-Media Intersection:
Subscribe to Our Content!
Visit our RSS Feeds page to choose among 13 customized feeds, or create a free My AmSci account to request an email notice whenever a specified author, department or discipline appears online.