Influential neighbours selection for information diffusion in online social networks

The problem of maximizing information diffusion through a network is a topic of considerable recent interest. A conventional problem is to select a set of any arbitrary k nodes as the initial influenced nodes so that they can effectively disseminate the information to the rest of the network. However, this model is usually unrealistic in online social networks since we cannot typically choose arbitrary nodes in the network as the initial influenced nodes. From the point of view of an individual user who wants to spread information as much as possible, a more reasonable model is to try to initially share the information with only some of its neighbours rather than a set of any arbitrary nodes; but how can these neighbours be effectively chosen? We empirically study how to design more effective neighbours selection strategies to maximize information diffusion. Our experimental results through intensive simulation on several real- world network topologies show that an effective neighbours selection strategy is to use node degree information for short-term propagation while a naive random selection is also adequate for long-term propagation to cover more than half of a network. We also discuss the effects of the number of initial activated neighbours. If we particularly select the highest degree nodes as initial activated neighbours, the number of initial activated neighbours is not an important factor at least for long-term propagation of information.