Patent Document ID: 9524527
Application ID: 13916775
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of determining a seed group from a plurality of users, wherein the seed group is determined for disseminating content across a communication network connecting the users, the method comprising: executing a content dissemination program on a processor of a computing device to perform: obtaining, from database storage, probabilities of the plurality of users influencing one another to observe the content; predicting an influence measure of each of the plurality of users disseminating the content to other users of the plurality of users, the predicting using the obtained probabilities; selecting users from the plurality of users until the seed group includes a predetermined number of the users, including iteratively: adding a selected user to the seed group if the influence measure of the selected user exceeds a threshold; if the selected user is added to the seed group, adjusting probabilities of the other users of the plurality of users influencing the selected user, including replacing probabilities of the other users to influence the selected user with a probability of self-influence associated with the selected user; and updating the influence measure of each of the plurality of users disseminating the content to the other users of the plurality of users using the adjusted probabilities; and communicating the content to the users of the seed group for dissemination to the plurality of users.