Context
Internet does not exist per se, it is merely the volatile aggregate of information, flowing around. For the past few years - following the emergence of the so-called Web 2.0 - information diffusion has been more and more orchestrated by bloggers instead of mainstream media. This paradigm shift has given us the opportunity to understand how word of mouth works by providing an actual framework in which a resource could be observed while spreading.
You can download the article here.
The Fun Part
Happy Flu was built as a viral marketing campaign which contained tools to track its propagation on the network. The experiment took place from July 08, 2008 to September 18, 2008. Five bloggers were selected among our relatives and were given a Flash widget to publish on their blogs. The widget was a visual representation of Happy Flu's current state of propagation.
A few figures
On July 8th 2008, five bloggers were selected to seed the Happy Flu, and by the end of the experiment, on September 18th 2008, about 500 blogs had relayed the information, totaling half a million hits and a 100.000 unique visitors.
Number of nodes and unique visitors through time
Datasets
We provide several datasets:
-
Diffusion data
information about the diffusion
-
Activity data
network activity
Contact