Propagating online social networks via different kinds of weak ties

Over the years, online social networks (OSNs) have become popular form of networks for people to create and maintain networks of friends, to share knowledge/interests, and to publish content on a massive scale. The popularity of such OSNs has formed a virtual platform for viral marketing of contents, products, target advertising, and political campaigns. The amount of work dedicated to studying information diffusion in OSNs has increased in recent years. Past research has clearly shown that diffusion of information in social networks depends on both the nature of the information and the structure of the network. In this study, we focus on one of the structural properties, tie strength, in the flow of information through social networks. Several studies have shown that weak ties can act as bridges, linking disconnected groups in the network, which, in turn, allows information to diffuse between subgroups. However, not all weak ties are “good” weak ties in the network. In this study, we want to prove that a weak tie helps in the spread of information, when a “good” weak tie is selected. Specifically, we proposed a simple mechanism to select “good” weak ties in each step of the propagation process. We simulate our mechanism on data collected from two blog networks (wretch.cc and tribe.com) and a Facebook network, and found that an appropriate weak tie can improve the diffusion of information.