Facebook app downloads show unique 'bandwagon effect'
Posted in: Mobile & Wireless at 13/10/2010 20:17
A study of the download rates of a set of apps for Facebook has shown how they follow an unusual "bandwagon effect".
Apps whose downloads were advertised to the Facebook community gained slowly in popularity, and rates had no evident connection to social pressures.
But at a certain popularity threshold, roughly the same across a wide range of apps, downloads began to skyrocket.
The authors of the research in PNAS say that in the offline world, no such "switch" is known to exist.
To read this BBC News report in full, see:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11523261
