Diffusion of innovation can be interpreted as a social spreading phenomena
governed by the impact of media and social interactions. Although these
mechanisms have been identified by quantitative theories, their role and
relative importance are not entirely understood, since empirical verification
has so far been hindered by the lack of appropriate data. Here we analyse a
dataset recording the spreading dynamics of the world's largest Voice over
Internet Protocol service to empirically support the assumptions behind models
of social contagion. We show that the rate of spontaneous service adoption is
constant, the probability of adoption via social influence is linearly
proportional to the fraction of adopting neighbours, and the rate of service
termination is time-invariant and independent of the behaviour of peers. By
implementing the detected diffusion mechanisms into a dynamical agent-based
model, we are able to emulate the adoption dynamics of the service in several
countries worldwide. This approach enables us to make medium-term predictions
of service adoption and disclose dependencies between the dynamics of
innovation spreading and the socioeconomic development of a country.

通过世界上最大的 VoIP 服务的传播动态数据集的分析，证明社交传染模型背后的假设：自发服务采用率是恒定的，通过社交影响采用的概率与采用邻居的比例成线性比例关系，服务终止率是恒定的并且独立于同伴行为。通过实施检测到的传播机制进入动态基于代理的模型，我们能够在全球许多国家模仿服务的采用动态，这种方法使我们能够进行中期服务采用的预测，并揭示创新传播的动态与国家社会经济发展之间的关系。