The secret physics of social network growth
A crowd draws a crowd but you need to be fit too. Distinguished Physicist Albert Laszlo Barabasi in his excellent book "Linked - the New Science of Networks" lets us into the secret of how any kind of network grows.
Relatively new research has shown that most networks are not random, as previously thought, but "Scale Free" .
New nodes in a scale free networks attach themselves to other nodes based on a "preferrential attachment rule" .
So the probability of a new member joining your network depends on the product of two factors known as the fitness connectivity product:
The number of existing members already linked into your network
multiplied by
The potential new member's assessment of the "fitness" of your network
Albert goes on to show that there are two network growth scenarios.
In Fit-get-rich there will be many winners.
These will be the fittest networks and each of the winners will have many more linked nodes than the losing networks (according to a Power Law).
in Winner-takes-all there will be only one winner - a single network which ends up with almost all the nodes linked to them.
Barabasi offers lots of examples of Fit-get-rich scenarios but says that the only real example of Winner-takes-all is Microsoft Windows!
Its also worth a visit to the books excellent companion web-site.
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
Tags: connections, scale free, Social Networks
Digg | 
del.icio.us | 
Reddit | 
Yahoo! | 
Add to my favourites
1 Comment | Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Related Book Reviews Articles
Mobile phone users: are we now cyborgs
The term cyborg is used to designate an organism which is a mixture of organic and synthetic parts so designed to enhance its abilities via technology. William Mitchell a professor at MIT Media Lab believes that through our mobile devices we are all becoming mobile cyborgs and its for the better. In his book Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City which he discusses in an interview with James Harkin Mitchell describes how the new communications technologies have overlaid our city spaces with central nervous systems connecting us into the wireless ether via our mobile devices which act as umbilical cords to anchor us into the information society's digital infrastructure.
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
Predictably Irrational teams
Teams, networks, groups and their members behave in an irrational way but quite predictably so. A good team leader will understand this and use it to everyone’s advantage. One key point is to knowing each team members motivations and whether they are operating in “social economy” or “market economy” mindsets.
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
The Organizational Zoo
I was introduced to an interesting book and web site, The Organizational Zoo, by Arthur Shelley which offers humorous observations of the characteristics and behaviours of the other creatures in your "organizational Zoo".
Buy it now from:
Amazon.Com
Amazon.Co.UK
can the Winner-takes-all also apply to a 'digital life aggregator'? what if a program comes around that is like an RSS reader for social networks. i used to go look at individual sites all the time and the fittest would get the most traffic. Now with an RSS reader, I scan for information and my attention is relatively evenly distributed with a few sources getting particular attention, but still through the RSS reader.
would a "digital life aggregator" that was the uber controller and interface with your networks, fit in the Winner-takes-all category?