Social Media Broadcasts and the Maintenance of Diverse Networks

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn let people broadcast messages to their entire network of contacts all at once. As the number of users and the amount of information they broadcast grow, platform managers face an increasingly pressing problem – which broadcasts should they show their users? To address this question, I study the database of a social media company that started charging its users to receive broadcasts about their contacts. By relating purchase rates to properties of users’ social networks, I identify which ties are most valuable to maintain through broadcasts. I find that strong ties increased purchase rates more than weak ties. However, purchase rates also increased with the structural diversity of users’ ties. Social media platforms should thus prioritize broadcasts from ties that are either strong or structurally diverse.