On the precision of social and information networks

The diffusion of information on online social and information networks has been a popular topic of study in recent years, but attention has typically focused on speed of dissemination and recall (i.e. the fraction of users getting a piece of information). In this paper, we study the complementary notion of the precision of information diffusion. Our model of information dissemination is "broadcast-based'', i.e., one where every message (original or forwarded) from a user goes to a fixed set of recipients, often called the user's ``friends'' or ``followers'', as in Facebook and Twitter. The precision of the diffusion process is then defined as the fraction of received messages that a user finds interesting.