Twitter is a web 2.0 social network which attracted much attention recently for its usage as an alternative media for information diffusion. From the recent events in arab countries, to natural disaster such as earthquakes or tsunamis, Twitter has proven to be a credible alternative to traditional means of information diffusion. Relatively few works have been done on this question of information diffusion, and in particular on the relative importance of different kind of users on this question. In this paper, we show that all users are not equal on the aspect of information diffusion. By investigating thoroughly the retweet chain lengths of users on a large dataset, we found that the number of followers of users plays an important role in their capacity to propagate information. From our observations we propose a very simple model, which is accurate enough to generate realistic length of retweet chains on the network. We consequently show, by studying a Twitter dataset centered on the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami in March 2011, that such a crisis impact greatly the propagation of information. Finally, we use our results to discuss on the means of improving information diffusion to reach targeted users.

Even with the rapid proliferation of applications (“apps”) running on smart handheld devices, achieving success in mobile platform ecosystems is challenging for developers because of the heavily crowded marketplaces and easy substitutability of apps. In this study, we draw inspiration from biological ecosystems research and from the operations management literatures on software production, product management, and digital platforms to empirically examine the sustainability of newly launched apps in the Apple and Google mobile platform ecosystems. In the ecology literature, a “habitat trap” refers to the instinctive but detrimental behavioral response which can potentially lead to the extinction of organisms facing dynamic changes in their habitats. Applying the habitat traps concept to mobile platform ecosystems, we investigate whether seemingly beneficial actions of app developers can indeed become detrimental to the sustainability of their apps. Using lifecycle data of 57,117 newly launched paid apps, we examine the impact of five developer actions (updating the apps, offering price promotions, and diversifying into functional variants, similar apps, and other platforms) on the sustainability of the apps. The results of our analysis show that while frequent app updates are beneficial, engaging in price promotions and diversification‐oriented activities indeed have the risks of turning into traps for developers. We utilize the empirical results to draw attention to the heterogeneity of traps in mobile platform ecosystems, shed light on the need to develop strategies for overcoming the traps, and discuss the implications of the presence of platform traps for emerging theories on digital ecosystems.

Social networks, such as Twitter, can quickly and broadly disseminate news and memes across both real-world events and cultural trends. Such networks are often the best sources of up-to-the-minute information, and are therefore of considerable commercial and consumer interest. The trending topics that appear first on these networks represent an answer to the age-old query “what are people talking about?” Given the incredible volume of posts (on the order of 45,000 or more per minute), and the vast number of stories about which users are posting at any given time, it is a formidable problem to extract trending stories in real time. In this article, we describe a method and implementation for extracting trending topics from a high-velocity real-time stream of microblog posts. We describe our approach and implementation, and a set of experimental results that show that our system can accurately find “hot” stories from high-rate Twitter-scale text streams.

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