A simple generative model of collective online behavior.

ABSTRACT: Human activities increasingly take place in online environments, providing novel opportunities for relating individual behaviors to population-level outcomes. In this paper, we introduce a simple generative model for the collective behavior of millions of social networking site users who are deciding between different software applications. Our model incorporates two distinct mechanisms: one is associated with recent decisions of users, and the other reflects the cumulative popularity of each application. Importantly, although various combinations of the two mechanisms yield long-time behavior that is consistent with data, the only models that reproduce the observed temporal dynamics are those that strongly emphasize the recent popularity of applications over their cumulative popularity. T

SUBMITTER: Gleeson JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4115507 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature