Dr. Yuping Liu and I are waiting to hear back on a research proposal we entered in the MSI & WIMI User-Generated Content Research Competition. Hopefully we’ll get some funding, but either way we’re working on our study, Rising to Stardom: How Do Some User-Generated Contents Become Popular? The key questions are how to predict UGC’s eventual success during the early stage of dissemination and what makes one piece of UGC extremely popular and others not. We’re basing our research on social network theory, particularly theories described in Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan J. Watts. The practical application of our findings will enable marketers to strategically participate in the conversation and collaboration facilitated through UGC and to better utilize their resources to focus on UGCs that are likely to affect a larger audience.