Network Crossover Advertising

I recently had a tweet go viral. By viral, I mean like 180 retweets. Nothing to write home about, but a personal best for sure (seeing as I only have 400 followers lol)

I became very interested about how that happened. I had been tweeting some HILARIOUS stuff for years (in my mind anyway) but nothing ever came close to this point. So I started wondering if there would be a way for Twitter to show me a map of the lifecycle of this tweet.

Maybe a good chunk of my consistent engaged followers retweeted it. They generally have the same network, so it could have run the circuit a few times and then died. But maybe there was a random outsider who only knew one other person in my network of followers, and that outsider retweeted it moved it along to an entirely new group. Maybe someone in there came along who had 5000 followers or more, and sent it on it's merry way to loads more eyes than it otherwise would have ever been shown to. 

It would be amazing to see a map of how this went down, who was connected to who, how many followers each retweet was shown to.

This could have huge utility in advertising. Let's say I'm a band planning a tour up the coast in small suburban cities. What if I could choose to advertise to a group of people with a high percentage of network crossover so they have a higher chance of attending my shows together in a group? Or let's say my product or service has a lot of built-in social currency (it makes someone cool to talk about) but I don't have a big advertising budget. If I'm confident users of my product are likely to tell their friends about it, I might choose to advertise to people with a low percentage of network crossover so I can maximize my budget and spread the word to as many networks as possible

I bet by the time I finish editing and publishing this post, Facebook will release a new feature with just that haha. Happy advertising, my friends!