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We find that rather than fanning out widely, reaching many people in very few steps according to \u201csmall-world\u201d principles, the progress of these chain letters proceeds in a narrow but very deep tree-like pattern, continuing for several hundred steps. This suggests a new and more complex picture for the spread of information through a social network. We describe a probabilistic model based on network clustering and asynchronous response times that produces trees with this characteristic structure on social-network data.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.0708471105","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2008,3,20]],"date-time":"2008-03-20T01:10:26Z","timestamp":1205975426000},"page":"4633-4638","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.cm10313","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":284,"title":["Tracing information flow on a global scale using Internet chain-letter data"],"prefix":"10.1073","volume":"105","author":[{"given":"David","family":"Liben-Nowell","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"*Department of Computer Science, Carleton College, Northfield, MN 55057; and"}]},{"given":"Jon","family":"Kleinberg","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853"}]}],"member":"341","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2008,3,25]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_3_1_2","volume-title":"Diffusion of Innovations","author":"Rogers E","year":"1995","unstructured":"E Rogers Diffusion of Innovations (Free Press, 4th Ed, New York, 1995).","edition":"4"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_2_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1146\/annurev.soc.24.1.265"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_3_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"P Domingos M Richardson Mining the network value of customers. eds F Provost R Srikant M Schkolnick D Lee (Association for Computing Machinery New York) pp. 57\u201366 (2001).","DOI":"10.1145\/502512.502525"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_4_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"D Kempe J Kleinberg \u00c9 Tardos Maximizing the spread of influence in a social network. eds L Getoor TE Senator P Domingos C Faloutsos (Association for Computing Machinery New York) pp. 137\u2013146 (2003).","DOI":"10.1145\/956750.956769"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_5_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"J Leskovec L Adamic B Huberman The dynamics of viral marketing. eds J Feigenbaum JC-I Chuang DM Pennock (Association for Computing Machinery New York) pp. 228\u2013237 (2006).","DOI":"10.1145\/1134707.1134732"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_6_2","unstructured":"E Adar L Zhang LA Adamic RM Lukose Implicit structure and the dynamics of blogspace. 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