Diffusion in complex social networks

This paper studies the problem of spreading a product (an idea, cultural fad or technology) among agents in a social network. An agent obtains the product with a probability that depends on the spreading rate of the product as well as on the behavior of the agent’s neighbors. This paper shows, using a mean field approach, that there exists a threshold for the spreading rate that determines whether the product spreads and becomes persistent or it does not spread and vanishes. This threshold depends crucially on the connectivity distribution of the network and on the mechanism of diffusion.