It seems that swine flu isn't the only infectious disease going around.
Whwn it comes to the web,the way that certain images, videos or concepts can suddenly spread like wildfire across the web, using email and social websites to propagate, is one of online culture's most unique phenomena.
The New Scientist reports that
Spanish researchers claim to have found a way to accurately predict how quickly and widely new pieces of information, or "memes" as they are called, will spread. The ability to forecast this "viral" behaviour would be of great interest to sociologists and marketeers, among others.
And yes it involves medical science which maps an infection's R0, or basic reproductive number, which describes how many other people someone with the virus can be expected to infect.
models that apply the idea to online information can only indicate whether an internet meme is likely to be successful or to die out quickly, says Esteban Moro at the Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain.
Ht-Martin Stabe
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