Excerpt from New Scientist -- "Random selection of who gets the message allowed the researchers to avoid common pitfalls in measuring influence, such as homophily bias – the principle that we tend to make friends with people like ourselves. 'If two friends adopt a product one after the other, current methods have a hard time distinguishing whether it is because of peer influence, or rather that the friends simply have similar preferences,' explains Aral."

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Additional coverage appeared in Tech Crunch.