  We analyze general trends and pattern in time series that characterize the
dynamics of collective attention to social media services and Web-based
businesses. Our study is based on search frequency data available from Google
Trends and considers 175 different services. For each service, we collect data
from 45 different countries as well as global averages. This way, we obtain
more than 8,000 time series which we analyze using diffusion models from the
economic sciences. We find that these models accurately characterize the
empirical data and our analysis reveals that collective attention to social
media grows and subsides in a highly regular and predictable manner.
Regularities persist across regions, cultures, and topics and thus hint at
general mechanisms that govern the adoption of Web-based services. We discuss
several cases in detail to highlight interesting findings. Our methods are of
economic interest as they may inform investment decisions and can help
assessing at what stage of the general life-cycle a Web service is at.
