Ooops! I forgot to respond to your point about “fitness.” I don’t think it can be described as “talent.” In fact, it is just a name given to a mathematical variable that neatly fits into Bose-Einstein statistics which happened to have extremely good explanatory power for networks and made a lot of sense conceptually.

Most likely, it is most related to meme fitness, which I wrote about recently: http://www.digitaltonto.com/2010/marketing-memes/

I hope that’s helpful.

- Greg

Thanks. I’m glad you liked it. Best to your wife and Joe:-)

- Greg

Thanks. To be honest, I don’t remember where I got that figure from. Usually I provide a link, but I didn’t with that one for some reason.

In any case, it’s been widely cited, here for instance: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/29/twitter-users-average-api-traffic

Thanks again for your comment.

- Greg

Opinionated. Loud. Very Loud. Coffee-addict. Did I mention loud? Creative. Writer. Idea instigator.

One thing I am not and NEVER will be is a “numbers guy.”

It’s that whole right side/left side brain thing. It’s one of the reasons I married a former bookkeeper. That and she’s pretty damn amazing and way too beautiful for a slug like me… but I digress.

Folks like you Greg (and my brother Joe) always impressed the hell out of me. How you can make sense out of stats, numbers, charts and so on… I will never understand. I am simply not wired that way.

I do appreciate you taking the time to explain so even a dolt like me can understand.

Steve O
steve olenski´s last [type] ..From Person To Person…

Firstly, great post.

I’m certainly not in Master Bieber’s target demographic and must confess that as a result I haven’t scratched beneath the surface of the ever-present social media phenomenon that is ‘Biebermania’. There are some really interesting learnings here.

The point about fitness resonated with me and I agree with it entirely. Are we meant, then, to assume that Bieber’s fitness as a node is a consequence of talent?

Also, interested to know where the 126 followers average (on Twitter) figure came from?

Keep up the good work,
Adrian

- Greg

Take care,
Terrence

Have a great week.

- Greg

Normal distribution models are irrelevant in any large scale networked system.

The mathematical model for social networks (and a staggering number of natural and man-made phenomena) is power law. Specifically, here’s an article by Clay Shirky from seven years ago describing the inevitability of “Justin Bieber’s.”

http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
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