A simple model of Twitter-based games: probabilistic message passing in a binary tree

Abstract

Viral marketing campaigns in the social networking site, Twitter, have been conducted frequently in forms of games of chance, whose growth in publicity is in the control of players who need to pass a particular message to their friends. Previous findings however show striking observations of the referral marketing immediately dying down, which paralyzes a large part of the downstream network due to decrease or loss in player activity. This game, characterized by a cascade network of players raises the possibility of competitive social restriction that causes the prevention of the self from passing the message on. We attempt to explain the observed phenomena by a simple model that mimics this propagation and investigate strategic gaming conditions that possibly affect the performance of the players. The model developed aims to create an initial groundwork for more accurate interpretations of this complex phenomena.