Duncan Watts
PRINCIPAL RESEARCHER
.
Duncan Watts is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and a founding member of the MSR-NYC lab. From 2000-2007, he was a professor of Sociology at Columbia University, and then, prior to joining Microsoft, a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research, where he directed the Human Social Dynamics group . He has also served on the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute and is currently a visiting fellow at Columbia University and at Nuffield College, Oxford.
His research on social networks and collective dynamics has appeared in a wide range of journals, from Nature, Science, and Physical Review Letters to the American Journal of Sociology and Harvard Business Review. He is also the author of three books: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (W.W. Norton, 2003) and Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness (Princeton University Press, 1999), and most recently Everything is Obvious: Once You Know The Answer (Crown Business, 2011)
He holds a B.Sc. in Physics from the Australian Defence Force Academy, from which he also received his officer’s commission in the Royal Australian Navy, and a Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University. He lives in New York City.
Publications
- Sharad Goel, Duncan Watts, and Dan Goldstein, The Structure of Online Diffusion Networks, in Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC 2012), 2012
- W. Mason and D.J. Watts, Collaborative learning in networks, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 3, pp. 764–769, National Acad Sciences, 2012
- D.J. Watts, Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer: How Common Sense Fails, , April 2011
- S. Suri and D.J. Watts, Cooperation and contagion in web-based, networked public goods experiments, in PLoS One, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. e16836, Public Library of Science, 2011
- E. Bakshy, J.M. Hofman, W.A. Mason, and D.J. Watts, Everyone's an influencer: quantifying influence on twitter, in Proceedings of the fourth ACM international conference on Web search and data mining, 2011
- S. Wu, J.M. Hofman, W.A. Mason, and D.J. Watts, Who says what to whom on twitter, in Proceedings of the 20th international conference on World wide web, 2011
- S. Goel, J.M. Hofman, S. Lahaie, D.M. Pennock, and D.J. Watts, Predicting consumer behavior with Web search, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 107, no. 41, pp. 17486–17490, National Acad Sciences, 2010
- Sharad Goel, Jake Hofman, Sebastien Lahaie, David Pennock, and Duncan Watts, Predicting Consumer Behavior with Web Search, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 2010
- M. De Choudhury, W.A. Mason, J.M. Hofman, and D.J. Watts, Inferring relevant social networks from interpersonal communication, in Proceedings of the 19th international conference on World wide web, 2010
- S. Goel, W. Mason, and D.J. Watts, Real and perceived attitude agreement in social networks., in Journal of personality and social psychology, vol. 99, no. 4, pp. 611, American Psychological Association, 2010
- S. Goel, D.M. Reeves, D.J. Watts, and D.M. Pennock, Prediction without markets, in Proceedings of the 11th ACM conference on Electronic commerce, 2010
- G. Kossinets and D.J. Watts, Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network, in American Journal of Sociology, vol. 115, no. 2, pp. 405–450, 2009
- M.J. Salganik and D.J. Watts, Web-Based Experiments for the Study of Collective Social Dynamics in Cultural Markets, in Topics in Cognitive Science, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 439–468, Wiley Online Library, 2009
- M.J. Salganik and D.J. Watts, Social influence: the puzzling nature of success in cultural markets, in Oxford Handbook of Analytic Sociology, pp. 315–341, Oxford University Press, 2009
- S. Goel, R. Muhamad, and D. Watts, Social search in small-world experiments, in Proceedings of the 18th international conference on World wide web, 2009
- W. Mason and D.J. Watts, Financial incentives and the performance of crowds, in ACM SIGKDD Human Computation, 2009
- R.D. Malmgren, J.M. Hofman, L.A.N. Amaral, and D.J. Watts, Characterizing individual communication patterns, in Arxiv preprint arXiv:0905.0106, 2009
- G. Kossinets, J. Kleinberg, and D. Watts, The structure of information pathways in a social communication network, in Proceeding of the 14th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, 2008
- M.J. Salganik and D.J. Watts, Leading the herd astray: An experimental study of self-fulfilling prophecies in an artificial cultural market, in Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 4, pp. 338–355, SAGE Publications, 2008
- D. Lopez-Pintado and D.J. Watts, Social influence, binary decisions and collective dynamics, in Rationality and Society, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 399–443, SAGE Publications, 2008
- D.J. Watts and P. Dodds, The accidental influentials, in Harvard Business Review, vol. 85, no. 2, pp. 22–23, 2007
- D.J. Watts, J. Peretti, and Harvard Business School, Viral marketing for the real world, Harvard Business School Pub., 2007
- N. Hanaki, A. Peterhansl, P.S. Dodds, and D.J. Watts, Cooperation in evolving social networks, in Management Science, vol. 53, no. 7, pp. 1036–1050, INFORMS, 2007
- D.J. Watts, The collective dynamics of belief, pp. 241, Stanford Univ Pr, 2007
- D.J. Watts and P.S. Dodds, Influentials, networks, and public opinion formation, in Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 441–458, JSTOR, 2007
- D.J. Watts, Is Justin Timberlake a product of cumulative advantage?, in The New York Times, 2007
- D.J. Watts, A twenty-first century science, in Nature, vol. 445, no. 7127, pp. 489–489, Nature Publishing Group, 2007
- D.J. Watts, J. Peretti, and M. Frumin, Viral Marketing for the Real World Duncan J. Watts, Jonah Peretti, and Michael Frumin, in Harvard Business Review, vol. 85, no. 5, Harvard Business School Pub., 2007
- G. Kossinets and D.J. Watts, Empirical analysis of an evolving social network, in Science, vol. 311, no. 5757, pp. 88–90, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2006
- M.E.J. Newman, A.L. Barabasi, and D.J. Watts, The structure and dynamics of networks, Princeton Univ Pr, 2006
- D.J. Watts and S. Hasker, Marketing in an unpredictable world, in Harvard Business Review, vol. 84, no. 9, pp. 25–30, 2006
- M.J. Salganik, P.S. Dodds, and D.J. Watts, Experimental study of inequality and unpredictability in an artificial cultural market, in science, vol. 311, no. 5762, pp. 854–856, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2006
- P.S. Dodds and D.J. Watts, A generalized model of social and biological contagion, in Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol. 232, no. 4, pp. 587–604, Elsevier, 2005
- D.J. Watts, R. Muhamad, D.C. Medina, and P.S. Dodds, Multiscale, resurgent epidemics in a hierarchical metapopulation model, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 102, no. 32, pp. 11157, National Acad Sciences, 2005
- D.J. Watts, The" new" science of networks, in Annual review of sociology, pp. 243–270, JSTOR, 2004
- P.S. Dodds and D.J. Watts, Universal behavior in a generalized model of contagion, in Physical Review Letters, vol. 92, no. 21, pp. 218701, APS, 2004
- D.J. Watts, Six degrees: The science of a connected age, WW Norton & Company, 2003
- P.S. Dodds, D.J. Watts, and C.F. Sabel, Information exchange and the robustness of organizational networks, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 100, no. 21, pp. 12516, National Acad Sciences, 2003
- D. Watts, The science behind six degrees, in Harvard business review, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 16–17, Harvard Business School Publication Corp., 2003
- P.S. Dodds, R. Muhamad, and D.J. Watts, An experimental study of search in global social networks, in Science, vol. 301, no. 5634, pp. 827–829, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2003
- D. Watts, Six degrees of interconnection, in Wired Magazine, vol. 136, 2003
- D.J. Watts, A simple model of global cascades on random networks, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 99, no. 9, pp. 5766, National Acad Sciences, 2002
- M.E.J. Newman, D.J. Watts, and S.H. Strogatz, Random graph models of social networks, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 99, no. Suppl 1, pp. 2566, National Acad Sciences, 2002
- D.J. Watts, P.S. Dodds, and M.E.J. Newman, Identity and search in social networks, in Science, vol. 296, no. 5571, pp. 1302–1305, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2002
- D.J. Watts, A Simple Model of Fads and Cascading Failures on Sparse Switching Networks, in Economics with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, pp. 13–25, Springer, 2001
- M.E.J. Newman, C. Moore, and D.J. Watts, Mean-field solution of the small-world network model, in Physical Review Letters, vol. 84, no. 14, pp. 3201–3204, APS, 2000
- D.S. Callaway, M.E.J. Newman, S.H. Strogatz, and D.J. Watts, Network robustness and fragility: Percolation on random graphs, in Arxiv preprint cond-mat/0007300, 2000
- J.W. Grossman and D.J. Watts, REVIEWS-Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between order and Randomness, in American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 107, no. 7, pp. 664–668, Menasha, Wisc.: The Association, 2000
- M.E.J. Newman, S.H. Strogatz, and D.J. Watts, Random graphs with arbitrary degree distributions and their applications, in Arxiv preprint cond-mat/0007235, 2000
- D.J. Watts, Networks, Dynamics, and the Smafl-World, in American Journal of Sociology, vol. 105, no. 2, pp. 493–527, 1999
- M.E.J. Newman and D.J. Watts, Scaling and percolation in the small-world network model, in Physical Review E, vol. 60, no. 6, pp. 7332, APS, 1999
- D.J. Watts, Small worlds: the dynamics of networks between order and randomness, Princeton University Press, 1999
- D.J. Watts, Networks, dynamics, and the small-world phenomenon 1, in American Journal of Sociology, vol. 105, no. 2, pp. 493–527, JSTOR, 1999
- M.E.J. Newman and D.J. Watts, Renormalization group analysis of the small-world network model, in Physics Letters A, vol. 263, no. 4-6, pp. 341–346, North-Holland, 1999
- D.J. Watts and S.H. Strogatz, Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’networks, in nature, vol. 393, no. 6684, pp. 440–442, Nature Publishing Group, 1998
