Marketing professor Zsolt Katona, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and a team of researchers found that as the number of one’s online contacts increases, the average influential power of that networking individual decreases.

From a marketer’s perspective, better understanding of consumer influencers is invaluable in developing successful marketing campaigns and effective viral marketing strategies. Katona recognized how social networks have transformed word-of-mouth communication between consumers and sought to identify how the networking structure drives consumers’ decisions. He says many viral marketers target people with the highest number of connections, but this study challenges that approach.

This study suggests businesses should focus their marketing efforts on individuals with fewer online social connections. Marketing products and services on social network sites without careful examination of the network structure may not be as effective as advertising on search engines. The paper, “Network Effects and Personal Influences: Diffusion of an Online Social Network,” does not study network growth or evolution, but focuses on the diffusion process of an existing network. Katona and co-authors Peter Pal Zubcsek, Ph.D. candidate at France’s INSEAD, and Miklos Sarvary, INSEAD marketing professor, also found online social networking produces a “clustering” effect that drives influence.

Read more about this study at: http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/551499/.