First 50 Retweets Can Tell If Tweet Will Go Viral

First 50 Retweets Can Tell If Tweet Will Go Viral

Beijing: Estimating how infectious a tweet is from the first 50 retweets is the key to predict whether a tweet will go viral or not, say researchers. A tweet’s virality is modulated most by its early spread rate and a gradual loss of interest over time. A new “Infectivity” model developed by Li Weihua and team from Beihang University, China can accurately predict a tweet lifespan. Although models developed in the field of infectious diseases have been used to describe the spread of ideas, studies have not used real data to estimate how infectious the information is.

To reach this conclusion, the researchers used about one month of Twitter data — comprising over 12 million tweets and more than 1.5 million retweets — and estimated each tweet’s infectivity based on the network dynamics of the first 50 retweets associated with it. They then incorporated the infectivity estimates into a model with a decay constant that captures the gradual decline in interest as online information ages. (IANS)

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