Mathematical model illustrates our online 'copycat' behaviour

Researchers have developed a mathematical model to examine online social networks, in particular the trade-off between copying what friends download and relying on 'best-seller' lists. The researchers from the University of Oxford, the University of Limerick, and the Harvard School of Public Health looked at how we are influenced in the choice of apps we download on our Facebook pages by creating a mathematical model to capture the dynamics at play. They found that Facebook users' choice of app was more influenced by friends' behaviour than by seeing Facebook's equivalent of best-seller lists. The model suggests users tended to be swayed by  activity on their friends' Facebook pages viewed on their Facebook feeds over the previous couple of days. The research, published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , finds that there is a strong 'copycat' tendency in human behaviour and we are influenced by the activities of others over a relatively short period of time. The mathematical model examined data from an empirical study published in 2010, which had tracked 100 million installations of apps adopted by Facebook users during two months. In the 2010 study, based on data collected in 2007, all Facebook users could see a list of the most popular apps (similar to best-seller lists) on their pages, and were also notified about their friends' recent app installations.