Twitter and Tipping Points
This article comments on the various ways in which information spreads through networks and how they can culminate to a tipping point. The authors looks at information dissemination through twitter specifically. Mainly, he identifies a few trends—the strength of weak ties, the long tail phenomenon, and homogenization—in how information will be transmitted around twitter. Weak ties are strong because they pass along new information to others. The long tail phenomenon is the reality that many Twitter users with few followers can spread information to more people than a few Twitter users with lots of followers. Finally, homogenization is the reality that popular information is copied and copied again throughout the network. This homogenization effect is how fads and trends develop, and Twitter is both a free and immediate way for homogenization of ideas and interests to develop.
These three information spreading phenomena relate to Chapters 17 and 18 from our book. When thinking about tipping points, I immediately think about our calculations in class and the existence of stable and unstable equilibria. As well, Twitter is a great example of the rich get richer effect because those with many followers can influence a large group of people with their own ideas or fads. In return, those people spread it to their smaller and smaller network until all users have seen and understood the information. Twitter is a great medium to start a trend and push it over the unstable equilibrium. The ways this can happen is through weak ties (your friend’s connections) and attempting to use small layers to spread information all throughout the network. While network effects are a burden until you surpass the tipping point, there are patterns in information dissemination that can be used to smartly distribute your new idea or trend.