Telenor shows that you want what your friends want

Five guys from Telenor Corporate Development wanted to understand how products spread. They believed that by studying the structure of the social network, they could better understand social influences on product adoption. One of the areas that they specifically looked at was the spread of iPhones in a single market – using anonymous call detail records to look for patterns.

On Monday, August 9, these findings will be presented at the International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining in Copenhagen. Telenor’s researchers will come armed with empirical evidence that people really do covet thy neighbor’s phone.

The spread of the iPhone

“We looked at iPhone data from its launch in 2007, so we were able to track the spread of this phone from the very beginning,” said Johannes Bjelland, Researcher, Telenor Group. “Early on, we saw that just a few people had iPhones but that they were quite well connected to each other. From that point on, everyone said that the iPhone was spreading, and now we have the proof that its spread was largely through groups of socially connected people.”

Since a person is more likely to purchase an iPhone if his friends have iPhones, it’s logical to use this information to create specifically targeted marketing campaigns. But in markets such as Scandinavia, it can be difficult to do this in practice, as the laws are strict in terms of keeping customer information anonymous.

Practical application of the research

“There are other ways to apply this data, ways in which you don’t need actual customer data,” explained Bjelland. “By looking for patterns in the anonymous data, we can find out which phones spread more virally than others. Once you know that a particular phone spreads quite virally, you can design a customer package accordingly, such as a friend referral program in which the customer gets something free for each friend he refers.”

“We can also use data from firms, as firms to not have the same privacy constraints as private citizens. By measuring influences from firm to firm, rather than individual to individual, we can look for social adoption patterns and create targeted marketing campaigns, for example, based on those patterns,” said Geoffrey Canright, Researcher, Telenor Group.

Viral effects are everywhere

So far, Telenor’s research team has analyzed the call detail records from nine of the countries in which Telenor operates. They are seeing that the viral spread of products is universal, and that in all markets, the probability of a person’s adoption of a product (such as a phone, or a service) increases with the number of friends who adopt that product.

“This research is providing us with important customer insight, so that we get the right products to the right people,” said Pål Sundøy, Researcher, Telenor Group. “Through our analysis we have gained a better understanding of the power of a friend’s referral and the importance of socially connected customers.”

Read more about Telenor and social mapping in MIT’s Technology Review