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Math and StatisticsOperations Research

Winner Takes All: Competing Viruses or Ideas on Fair-Play Networks

Authors: B A Prakash; Alex Beutel; Roni Rosenfeld; Christos Faloutsos; CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIV PITTSBURGH PA DEPT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
Abstract:
Given two competing products (or memes, or viruses etc.) spreading over a given network, can we predict what will happen at the end, that is, which product will 'win', in terms of highest market share? One may naively expect that the better product (stronger virus) will just have a larger footprint proportional to the quality ratio of the products (or strength ratio of the viruses). However, we prove the surprising result that, under realistic conditions, for any graph topology, the stronger virus completely wipes-out the weaker one, thus not merely winning' but taking it all'. In addition to the proofs, we also demonstrate our result with simulations over diverse, real graph topologies, including the social-contact graph of the city of Portland OR (about 31 million edges and 1 million nodes) and internet AS router graphs. Finally, we also provide real data about competing products from Google-Insights, like Facebook-Myspace, and we show again that they agree with our analysis.

Limitations: APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE
Description: Conference paper
Pages: 11
Report Date: Jan 2012
Contract Number: W911NF-09-2-0053
Report Number: A945655
Keywords relating to this report:
COMPETITION
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
NETWORKS
SELECTION
SYMPOSIA
TOPOLOGY
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