Large social networks can be targeted for viral marketing with small seed sets

Paulo Shakarian, Damon Paulo

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

In a "tipping" model, each node in a social network, representing an individual, adopts a behavior if a certain number of his incoming neighbors previously held that property. A key problem for viral marketers is to determine an initial "seed" set in a network such that if given a property then the entire network adopts the behavior. Here we introduce a method for quickly finding seed sets that scales to very large networks. Our approach finds a set of nodes that guarantees spreading to the entire network under the tipping model. After experimentally evaluating 31 real-world networks, we found that our approach often finds such sets that are several orders of magnitude smaller than the population size. Our approach also scales well - on a Friendster social network consisting of 5.6 million nodes and 28 million edges we found a seed sets in under 3.6 hours. We also find that highly clustered local neighborhoods and dense network-wide community structure together suppress the ability of a trend to spread under the tipping model.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2012 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM 2012
Pages1-8
Number of pages8
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event2012 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM 2012 - Istanbul, Turkey
Duration: Aug 26 2012Aug 29 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 2012 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM 2012

Other

Other2012 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM 2012
Country/TerritoryTurkey
CityIstanbul
Period8/26/128/29/12

Keywords

  • Social networks
  • Viral marketing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Software

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