How Stuff Spreads

Francesco D’Orazio@abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com

How Stuff SpreadsHow Video Goes Viral

meme

“an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture”

Back in March 2013, we started by mapping replica

memes, memes based on an original piece of content that spreads and gets replicated into variably successful

variations

5% 1%

We learned, updated the framework and repeated the experiment with

4 new types of meme: a music video, a citizen journalism video, an ad, a web series

@abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com

Diffusion PatternsHow the meme gets passed on from person to person via tweets and retweets

@abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com

SizeHow many people shared the link to the meme and how many posts did they generate?

42,900Tweets

38,300Retweets

75,067Unique Authors / Active Audience

38,700Tweets

26,200Retweets

62,324Unique Authors / Active Audience

5,330Tweets

7,610Retweets

11,868Unique Authors / Active Audience

5,680Tweets

24,600Retweets

27,993Unique Authors / Active Audience

@abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com

NarrativeHow did the viral narrative develop?

11-May 18-May 25-May 1-Jun 8-Jun0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

Launched at 10pm GMT on 12 May, & gets 11,400 Twitter shares in 2 hours

Peaks at 51,600 shares on 13 May

Within a week it's below 1000 shares per day (17 May)

Perfect power law decay – no spikes after launch after a big influencer finds it belatedly

15-Apr 22-Apr 29-Apr 6-May 13-May 20-May 27-May 3-Jun 10-Jun0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

14,000

Continuing ripples even a month after a launch, as new communities and community influencers discover the video

600 people find & tweet/RT the video on 15 April, before Dove officially tweet it (@Dove_Canada on 16th)

Peaks on Day 3, the 17 April. Doesn't show the rapid power-law decay of the news-driven searches

Secondary peaks when it spreads into new communities & is noticed by new influencers. E.g. @DoveUKI on 19 Apr

1-Jun 8-Jun 15-Jun 22-Jun0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

Very sharp decay for this news-driven video, which gained its value from showing events in Gezi Park when Turkish TV channels weren't.

Day 3: only 197 shares

21-Apr 28-Apr 5-May 12-May 19-May 26-May 2-Jun 9-Jun 16-Jun 23-Jun0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

4,000

Unlike other videos this is serialised content. Peaks when(a) new video released(b) picked up by top influential Vine account

@abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com

ShapeQuantifying virality. Which variables are best for identifying a viral phenomenon?

Dove Real Beauty

Ryan Gosling

Cmdr Hadfield

Turkish protest

197%

194%

355%

435%

Coefficient of variation (%)

All memes are volatile

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57 59 610

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

Commander HadfieldDoveTurkeyRyan Gosling

Days since video launch

1Day

1Day

3 Days 18 Days

Time to Peak varies (shares/day)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 240

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000Commander HadfieldDoveTurkeyRyan Gosling

Diffusion Velocity varies (shares/hour on peak

day)

Dove Real Beauty

Ryan Gosling

Cmdr Hadfield

Turkish protest

1,088

5,108

12,886

Social currency (shares per 1m views)

Shareability varies

View count not available on Vine

Dove Real Beauty

Ryan Gosling

Cmdr Hadfield

Turkish protest

20

8

8

2

Lifespan varies (continuous period at 500 shares/day)

Although none of the variables alone proved useful to identify a viral phenomenon, all of them

correlate around two main models of viral spread

Spikers vs Growers

High VolatilityFast to PeakHigh VelocityHigh ShareabilityShorter Lifespan

Lower VolatilitySlower to

PeakLower

VelocityLower

ShareabilityLonger

Lifespan

But what makes a meme spread along the first or the second

model? We looked at the audience of the memes to answer

this question…

AudienceCan the audience composition explain why memes develop along one of the other model?

@abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com

Dove Real Beauty

Ryan Gosling

Cmdr Hadfield

Turkish protest

35

30

34

29

All memes are similarly amplified(average Visibility of a post containing the meme)

75%

63%

14%

34%

Globality rate varies(% of shares from countries other than the top one)

Since both Amplification and Globality seemed not to

correlate with one or the other model of virality we then looked at the demographics engaged with each meme

30 Years

66%

34% White

Christian 55%

Jewish 36%

Students 9%

Journalists 9%

Web devs 8%

Senior Managers 7%Musicians 6%

@NASA@StephenFry@BarackObama@DalaiLama@Conan O’Brien

TechnologyScience NewsPhotographyMusicComedy

London 11%

Toronto 5%

New York 3%

Dublin 3%Vancouver 2%

19 Years

21%

79%

White 81% BlackHispanic

Christian 67%

Muslim 24%

Students 15%

Sales 10%

Journalists 4%PhotographersArtistsStylistsAdmin Staff

@KatyPerry@E.DeGeneres@TaylorSwift@JustinBieber@LadyGaga@KimKardashian

ComedyMusicFashionTV/FilmHealth IssuesSports

London 5%

Toronto 5%

New York 4%Riyadh 3%

26 Years

50%50%White 99%

Muslim 94%

Students 12%

Musicians 8%

Senior Managers 8%Web DevelopersJournalistsEngineersGraphic DesignerTeachers

@CemYilmaz@SertabErener@AbdullahGül@BarackObama@ConanO’Brien@WikiLeaks@Nytimes@BBCNews

PoliticsNewsTechFootballMusic

Instanbul 50%

Izmir 32%

Ankara 4%Bursa 1%

18 Years

26%

74%

White BlackHispanic

Christian 84%

Muslim 9%

Students 33%

Musicians 13%

Actors 4%

@JustinBieber@TaylorSwift@KatyPerry@MileyCyrus@DanielTosh@SnookiPolizzi

ComedyMusicDatingExtreme Sports

NYC 6%

London 3%

Los Angeles 2%Chicago 2%

As we couldn’t find any correlation between demographic traits and virality models we then turned to the structure of the audience by mapping the

social graph (followers/friends) of the people who shared the meme

11.226.84

4.263.14

Audience connectedness (avg degree)

Highly connected audiences (higher average degree in the audience network) make the meme

spread faster

0.506

0.466

Audience fragmentation (modularity)

0.752

0.650

High audience fragmentation into sub-communities (high modularity of the audience

network) makes the meme spread slower

130 communities

3 connect up to 50% of the audience

1356communities

8 connect up to 50% of the audience

51communities

2connect up to 50% of the audience

382communities

5 connect up to 50% of the audience

130

51

1356

387

But what is causing higher or lower fragmentation within an

audience?

32, male, white, CAN/USA, into science, tech and comedy

30, male, white, UK, into tech, comedy and music

32, female, white, USA/NYC, marketing professional

16, female, white/hispanic, USA/LA, into teen pop and reality tv

25, mixed, white, Turkey/Istanbul, into politics, sports, web

21, mixed, white, Turkey/Izmir, into politics, sports, web

17, female, white/black/hispanic, USA/Texas, into teen pop and reality tv

19, female, white, Global, into comedy, music, tv

High demographic diversity correlates with high modularity

and slower meme velocity

Dynamics

@abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com

Trigger > Validation > Escalation

Emotion is the trigger

community relevance provides validation (topicality & timing)

Gatekeepers activate the communities within the

audience and escalate the diffusion

But it’s the social structure of the audience that

determines the diffusion model

Vs.

Thank You

@abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com