  Large-scale mobilization of individuals across social networks is becoming
increasingly influential in society. However, little is known about what traits
of recruiters and recruits and affect the speed at which one mobilizes the
other. Here we identify and measure traits of individuals and their
relationships that predict mobilization speed. We ran a global social
mobilization contest and recorded personal traits of the participants and those
they recruited. We identified how those traits corresponded with the speed of
mobilization. Recruits mobilized faster when they first heard about the contest
directly from the contest organization, and decreased in speed when hearing
from less personal source types (e.g. family vs. media). Mobilization was
faster when the recruiter and the recruit heard about the contest through the
same source type, and slower when both individuals were in different countries.
Females mobilized other females faster than males mobilized other males.
Younger recruiters mobilized others faster, and older recruits mobilized
slower. These findings suggest relevant factors for engineering social
mobilization tasks for increased speed.
