A measurement-driven analysis of information propagation in the flickr social network

ABSTRACT

Online social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Flickr have become a popular way to share and disseminate content. Their massive popularity has led to viral marketing techniques that attempt to spread content, products, and ideas on these sites. However, there is little data publicly available on viral propagation in the real world and few studies have characterized how information spreads over current online social networks.

In this paper, we collect and analyze large-scale traces of information dissemination in the Flickr social network. Our analysis, based on crawls of the favorite markings of 2.5 million users on 11 million photos, aims at answering three key questions: (a) how widely does information propagate in the social network? (b) how quickly does information propagate? and (c) what is the role of word-of-mouth exchanges between friends in the overall propagation of information in the network? Contrary to viral marketing ``intuition,'' we find that (a) even popular photos do not spread widely throughout the network, (b) even popular photos spread slowly through the network, and (c) information exchanged between friends is likely to account for over 50 of all favorite-markings, but with a significant delay at each hop.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.5 On-line Information Services
          Subjects: Web-based services

Additional Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.4 SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
      Subjects: Sociology

General Terms:
Human Factors, Measurement

Keywords:
cascades, flickr, information dissemination, social networks, viral marketing