First 50 re-tweets can predict if a tweet will go viral

Estimating how infectious a tweet is from the first 50 re-tweets is the key to predicting whether a post will go viral or not, a study has found.

As online social networks and media continue to grow, so has the importance of understanding how they influence our thoughts and opinions, said researchers from Beihang University in China.

Being able to predict the spread of social contagions is considered a key goal for those social information networks, according to the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Researchers used about one month of Twitter data — comprising over 12 million tweets and more than 1.5 million re-tweets — and estimated each tweet’s infectivity based on the network dynamics of the first 50 re-tweets associated with it.