Celebrity gossip on social networking sites such as Facebook spreads
rapidly in the manner of a contagious virus, say researchers.
Mathematicians have developed an equation that describes internet
rumours' ability to fly around the globe in a matter of hours. They say
this is why the secrets of the rich and famous rarely stay hidden for
long anymore, reports dailymail.co.uk.
The supposed marital woes of France's first couple, Nicolas Sarkozy and
Carla Bruni, and some unsavoury text messages between golf star Tiger
Woods and one of his mistresses are among the most recent subjects to
spread like wild fire via Twitter, blogs and Facebook.
The scientists at Rome's La Sapienza University created their equation
in a bid to measure the internet's power to spread indiscretion.
'And it shows just how fast news and gossip travels these days. It's
like influenza,' said Team leader Alessandro Panconesi.
They will present the findings at the Symposium on the Theory of
Computing in Cambridge, Massachusetts later this year.
They are yet to test their theory on the latest celebrity gossip. But
Panconesi said he's already demonstrated its reliability, thanks to the
help of a fellow researcher in the US.
Recently the American mathematician posted one Tweet about the Italian
group's failure to get the funding promised them by the Italian
government to carry out their research on the spread of gossip on the
internet.
'And within 17 hours there's a whole page about the work in the Corriere
della Sera newspaper,' said Panconesi.
'Funding for science in this country is abysmal and we wanted to show
it. I think we've managed it,' he added.
But the newspapers in Italy, a country that is obsessed with celebrity,
were more interested in hailing the research as evidence of the
internet's miraculous power to shine a light on the lives of the rich
and famous.
Corriere della Sera compared the speed of Tiger Woods's fall from grace
with the time it took Cicero's sniping about Julius Caesar's sexuality
to be recorded in the history books by Plutarch - a snail-like 150 years
or so.
The formula is: Time (taken for spread of gossip) = estimate of time
(log v x log squared 1)/phi square; where, v is number of vertices of
communication and phi is equal to conductance.