Upload
david-evans
View
4.499
Download
1
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Citation preview
psychology of social media
Beyond Influencers: Network Properties and Viral Marketing
Prepared byDavid C. Evans Ph.D.
Psychster Inc.1.15.2009
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
“A Metapattern…is the discarding of magnitudes in favor of shapes, patterns, and relations.”
Gregory Bateson, Cambridge Sociologist, in Mind and Nature, 1979
“One system may have one or more variables, each of which varies comparably to a variable in another system.”
James Grier Miller, University of Chicago Psychologist, in Living Systems, 1978
Leveraging Biological Patterns to Understand Social Networks
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
Leveraging Biological Patterns to Understand Social Networks
“The more mechanical we make our fabricated environment, the more biological it will eventually have to be if it is to work at all.”
“The world of our own making has become so complicated that we must turn to the world of the ‘born’ to understand how to manage it.”
“Ancient metaphors…of a machine as organism and an organism as machine are as old as the first machine itself. But now those enduring metaphors are no longer poetry. They are becoming real – profitably real.”
Kevin Kelly, Executive Editor of WIRED, in Out of Control, 1994
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
The Network Metapattern
Network Property Brain Social Media Epidemic Airline Electrical Gridnumber of nodes neurons people people destinations generating
stations & customers
number of connections
number of synapses
number of “influence channels”
number of contacts
number of connections
number of transmission lines
strength of signal intensity of impulse
appeal of content reproduction rate of virus
capacity of aircraft
voltage
strength of connections
thickness of axons
intimacy of friendships
intimacy of contacts
frequency of flights to a
given destination
current capacity & resistance
threshold to fire threshold of sodium channels
likelihood to forward
likelihood of infection
percent of connections
made
uptime of distributors
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
The Network Metapattern
Network Property Brain Social Medianumber of nodes neurons people
number of connections
number of synapses
number of “influence channels”
strength of signal intensity of impulse
appeal of content (open rate)
strength of connections
thickness of axons
intimacy of friendships
threshold to fire threshold of sodium channels
likelihood to forward
12
3
4
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
Six Degrees of Separation
Network Property Brain Social Medianumber of nodes neurons people
number of connections
number of synapses
number of “influence channels”
strength of signal intensity of impulse
appeal of content
strength of connections
thickness of axons
intimacy of friendships
threshold to fire threshold of sodium channels
likelihood to forward
“The mean number of intermediaries observed in this study was somewhat greater than five…additional research indicates this value is quite stable.”
Travers & Milgram. Sociometry, 1969
“A random pair of nodes in the Messenger network is 6.6 hops apart on the average.”
Leskovec & Horvitz. Microsoft Research, 2007
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
The Debate Over Influentials “If word of mouth is like a radio signal broadcast over the country, Influentials are the strategically placed transmitters that amplify the signal, multiplying dramatically the number of people who hear it.”
Keller & Berry, in The Influentials, 2003
“Cascades do not succeed because of a few highly influential individuals influencing everyone else, but rather on account of a critical mass of easily influenced individuals influencing other easy-to-influence people.
Watts & Dodds, JCR, 2007
Network Property Brain Social Medianumber of nodes neurons people
number of connections
number of synapses
number of “influence channels”
strength of signal intensity of impulse
appeal of content
strength of connections
thickness of axons
intimacy of friendships
threshold to fire threshold of sodium channels
likelihood to forward
InfluentialsAverage
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
Design Examples – Strength of Signal
Network Property Brain Social Medianumber of nodes neurons people
number of connections
number of synapses
number of “influence channels”
strength of signal intensity of impulse
appeal of content
strength of connections
thickness of axons
intimacy of friendships
threshold to fire threshold of sodium channels
likelihood to forward
Send from name not company Merge real names not profile names Ensure canned copy is conversational Appears 1:1 not 1:many Personal relevance.
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
Design Examples – Number of Connections
Network Property Brain Social Medianumber of nodes neurons people
number of connections
number of synapses
number of “influence channels”
strength of signal intensity of impulse
appeal of content
strength of connections
thickness of axons
intimacy of friendships
threshold to fire threshold of sodium channels
likelihood to forward
Reveal friends of friends Import from address books Recommend likely acquaintances
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
Network Property Brain Social Medianumber of nodes neurons people
number of connections
number of synapses
number of “influence channels”
strength of signal intensity of impulse
appeal of content
strength of connections
thickness of axons
intimacy of friendships
threshold to fire threshold of sodium channels
likelihood to forward
Design Examples – Strength of Connections
Ensure digital connections to have a real (biological) counterpart
Recommend making most likely sociological connections
Achieve goals.
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
Network Property Brain Social Medianumber of nodes neurons people
number of connections
number of synapses
number of “influence channels”
strength of signal intensity of impulse
appeal of content
strength of connections
thickness of axons
intimacy of friendships
threshold to fire threshold of sodium channels
likelihood to forward
Design Examples – Threshold to Forward
Unify consuming and forwarding into the same action.
Reward forwarding with status.
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
Network Property Brain Social Medianumber of nodes neurons people
number of connections
number of synapses
number of “influence channels”
strength of signal intensity of impulse
appeal of content
strength of connections
thickness of axons
intimacy of friendships
threshold to fire threshold of sodium channels
likelihood to forward
Design Examples – Threshold to Forward
Promoter
Consumer
Producer
Shift from targeting Influentials to cultivating Promoters.
Track top forwarders (recipients must open and forward on).
Associate them with artists.
“The tendency to ‘bask in reflected glory’ (BIRG) by publicly announcing one's associations with successful others.”
Robert Cialdini et al., ASU Psychologist, in JPSP, 1976
Psychster Inc.© Copyright 2009 Psychster Inc. All rights reserved.
About Psychster
Our mission is to leverage the theoretical views and experimental rigor of psychology to assist social media ventures.
Our-philosophy is that end-users are taking control of their media in a Web 2.0 world. The more you understand them the better.
Our people are Ph.D. trained social scientists with extensive business and publishing experience in social software and social media.
Our clients are publishers, advertisers, designers, academics and entrepreneurs with online investments.