Republic of Mathematics blog

Wikileaks Facebook fan statistics

Posted by: Gary Ernest Davis on: December 1, 2010

The chart below shows a sudden change in the growth rate of Facebook fans for  Wikileaks:

When linear growth becomes exponential the underlying mechanism driving growth has changed.

Clearly something happened prior to, prescription or around, physician November 28 to change the model of fan acqusition to the Wikileaks Facebook page.

This is not just a change in growth: it is a change in the model of growth, from one of steady linear increments, to a model of exponential expansion.

Whether that growth flattens out or continues to grow exponentially for a while, time will tell.

The source for the chart is here.

4 Responses to "Wikileaks Facebook fan statistics"

Wikileaks released the US embassy cables on 11/28: http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/

What does the data look like around 10/22 when the “Iraq War Logs” were released?

That’s a good question Ryan. I don’t know – yet – how to get that data.

Did a little digging and found out the following:

An unofficial Wikileaks Facebook page with 30k member was deleted in April, and the official page was started on April14.

Some milestones were posted via status updates:
hit 30k on May 2
hit 40k on June 18
hit 50k on July 26
hit 69k on July 30
hit 90k on August 19
hit 100k on August 28

Still can’t find enough October data to determine how the 10/22 leak affected things.

Thanks for this information Ryan.

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