A new study shows that consumers have a herding instinct to follow the crowd. However, this instinct appears to switch off if the product fails to achieve a certain popularity threshold. The Oxford University study is based on an analysis of how millions of Facebook users adopted software, known as apps, to personalise their Facebook pages.
The researchers analysed anonymised data that tracked 100 million installations of apps adopted by Facebook users over two months in 2007. The data allowed researchers to observe on an hourly basis the rate at which 2,700 apps were installed by 50 million Facebook users. They discovered that once an app had reached a rate of about 55 installations a day, its popularity then soared to reach stellar proportions. A typical app was installed by 1,000 users, but the most popular app Top Friends was in a different league, being adopted by almost a fifth (12 million users) of the entire Facebook population.
The study concludes that social influence had a key role in whether apps became flops or hits. Crucially, when the data was monitored in 2007, Facebook friends would always be notified if one of their online friends adopted a new app. All Facebook users could also see a list of the most popular apps – similar to best-seller lists – so knew how the global as well as their local community of Facebook friends rated the apps.
Senior researcher Felix Reed-Tsochas, from Oxford University's Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the Said Business School, said: Our analysis reveals a very interesting new finding. Users only appear to be influenced by the choices of other users above a certain level of popularity, and at that point popularity drives future popularity. Below this threshold, the effects of social influence are imperceptible. Because popularity seems to depend mainly on the choices of other users in the community, rather than intrinsic characteristics of the applications themselves, it does not appear possible to predict which applications will succeed and which will fail ahead of time.
The findings could have implications for the online world, for example the book retailers who allow users to rate the products and thereby influence their future popularity. The study may also inform us about our behaviour in the offline world too.
Reed-Tsochas commented: There has been a lot of research into the spread of ideas and products. Previously, we have only been able to track the spread of successful innovations, and then only among a small set of potential users. Our research in the virtual world of online social networks is the equivalent to moving from a fixed telescope that lets us view a restricted number of stars to having a complete map of all the stars in the universe. At this stage, we simply don't know whether this marks an important difference between offline and online behaviour, or whether more detailed and comprehensive data from offline contexts will identify similar collective behaviour in settings that do not involve online environments. The data used by the research team contains no information about individuals, and only information about individual applications, so there are no implications in terms of the privacy of individual Facebook users.
Basil Venitis has observed a similar switch off if paranormal phenomena fail to achieve a certain popularity threshold. Venitis muses that pseudoscience, UFOs, extraterrestrials, NDEs, religions, scams, and hoaxes succeed because they exploit powerful psychological processes. These processes are the very ones that have enabled humans to survive and create art and technology, but also transform Homo Sapiens into Homo Suckers.
Venitis points out UFO, unidentified flying object, is any unexplained moving object observed in the sky. But hoi polloi believe UFOs are alien spacecrafts. This represents a quantum leap from unidentified lights in the sky or radar bogies. Hoi polloi are talking about actual alien contact, with alien bases on the Moon and Mars, and their concerns receive reinforcement from the media.
UFOs are real, of course; many people occasionally see objects in the sky that are not immediately identifiable as planes, balloons, planets, stars, or unusual atmospheric phenomena. But hoi polloi link UFOs with alien visitations and abductions spiced up by conspiracy theories to hide this information from the public.
If UFOs are alien spacecraft visiting Earth, then it seems reasonable that evidence of alien civilizations might be seen by astronomers or the radio signals from alien spacecraft might be picked up by the sensitive receivers we use to communicate with our own spacecrafts. Perhaps astronauts who venture into space would be among the first to make reliable observations of alien spacecraft or artifacts. Perhaps we should look for alien bases on other worlds. But nothing of that ever happens.
Basil Venitis muses that you break the heart of a child when you tell him there is no Santa Claus, and you break the heart of an adult when you tell him there are no extraterrestrials yet! Stories about extraterrestrials(ET) are very popular. Many of the abductees have simply had common waking dreams, which occur in the borderland between wakefulness and sleep. Others have been hypnotized by alien-abduction gurus like John Mack and therefore have merely gone on a trip to Fantasyland that can conjure up false memories.
Some of the more elaborate experiences happened to subjects like Whitley Strieber, author of Communion, who, though sane and normal, nevertheless exhibit many of the traits of fantasy-prone personalities: being easily hypnotized, having vivid memories, experiencing intense dreams, and having out-of-body experiences, among others. A few alleged abductees may be psychotic, while others seem so craving of attention that they have turned to hoaxing.
Venitis notes that hallucination is perception in the absence of stimulus. Sleep paralysis occurs in 30% of the general population. In it you wake up in bed, feel paralyzed, and tend to sense a terrifying presence in your room, a hallucination. Sometimes you see something; sometimes you hear noises or even feel electrical shocks throughout your body. You might see a small humanoid, an ET, a dog, a cat, ghosts, vampires, whatever you have in your mind or are particularly afraid of. Deceased relatives and loved ones are particularly good candidates for showing up during bouts of sleep paralysis. A hallucination is a perception in the absence of a stimulus.
A near-death experience (NDE), refers to a broad range of hallucinatory experiences associated with impending death, encompassing multiple possible sensations including detachment from the body; feelings of levitation; extreme fear; total serenity, security, or warmth; the experience of absolute dissolution; and the presence of a light, which some people interpret as a deity.
These phenomena are usually reported after an individual has been pronounced clinically dead or otherwise very close to death, hence the term near-death experience. Many NDE reports, however, originate from events that are not life-threatening. With recent developments in cardiac resuscitation techniques, the number of reported NDEs has increased.
NDEs are psychopathological symptoms caused by a severe malfunction of the brain resulting from the cessation of cerebral blood circulation. Near-death experiences can have a major impact on the people who have them, and they may produce a variety of after-effects. NDE subjects have increased activity in the left temporal lobe.
NDEs are also associated with changes in personality and outlook on life. There is a consistent set of value and belief changes associated with people who have had a near-death experience. Among these changes one finds a greater appreciation for life, higher self-esteem, greater compassion for others, a heightened sense of purpose and self-understanding, desire to learn, elevated spirituality, greater ecological sensitivity and planetary concern, and a feeling of being more intuitive.
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