Facebook Contagion
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/04/how-facebook-contagion-spreads
This article is related to the spread of social media websites, specifically Facebook, and tries to explain the elements that may drive you to join such a site. What the article found, was that it is not the sheer number of people you know who have joined the site that will make you also join, the result was that groups of friends, over number, were more influential in your decision of whether to participate or not. The study used 54 million Facebook invitation emails where each email contains every person who invited the friend to join. The article uses a comprehensive example to explain the effect they observed. “If four people who were all connected via Facebook friendships were listed on the invitation, for example, the recipient was as likely to join the site as if one friend was listed. But if the message contained the names of four people who had no direct Facebook friendships between them [the odds of joining doubled]”. The article goes on to explain the reason that such an effect was observed, explaining that having more than 1 group of friends put more pressure on the invitee to join or that the invitee had a favorite group that would make him join. Having more groups on the invitee list would increase the probability of such a group being on the list.
This article has a few implications to topics we have discussed in class. First of all, I think this can relate in a way to the strength of weak ties argument, even though these are hypothetically good friends. If a person gets invited to something they hadn’t thought about joining, it may be more likely for them to join if they are exposed to it by a wide range of friends or acquaintances. I think this article also somewhat diminishes strong triadic closure argument by saying that having 4 people all from one group invite you produces the same odds of you joining as having 1 person from the group invite you. By molding the strong triadic closure argument, it would seem that if multiple friends, who are friends with each other and friends with you adopt a new social medial platform, you would be likely to adopt it as well. I think the most logical argument as to why these results occurred is that the broader the network that is already using the platform, the more likely you are to join.