Evolution of Social Networks

Abstract

Modeling the evolution of networks is central to our understanding of modern large communication systems, such as the World-Wide-Web, as well as economic and social networks. The research on social and economic networks is truly interdisciplinary and the number of modeling strategies and concepts is enormous. In this survey we present some modeling approaches, covering classical random graph models and game-theoretic models, which may be used to provide a unified framework to model and analyze the evolution of networks.

CRM in social media: Predicting increases in Facebook usage frequency

“…There is a large body of research on social networks (Hellmann and Staudigl, 2014) reporting the 29 A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T influence of network effects on a wide range of behaviors (e.g., Bakshy et al, 2012). These effects are in part driven by homophily, also called endogenous group formation (Hartmann et al, 2008), and (social) influence (Aral et al, 2009).…”

Heuristic decision making in network linking

“…Therefore, theoretical OR models of network creation (e.g., Fabrikant et al, 2003;Baron et al, 2006;Monsuur, 2007;Demaine et al, 2012;Janssen & Monsuur, 2012;Harmsen -van Hout et al, 2013;Hellmann & Staudigl, 2014;Olaizola & Valenciano, 2014) should take such effects into consideration. In particular, the current experiment was based on payoff functions used in Harmsen -van Hout et al to model communication network formation with high link specificity.…”

“…Accordingly, the abovementioned OR models on decentral network creation may result in opposite recommendations for optimal interventions. Although the approaches of these models vary in several respects, they all take optimizing individuals as a starting point, at most with some random deviation therefrom (e.g., Baron et al, 2006;Hellmann & Staudigl, 2014), whereas we investigate in how far real people systematically deviate from this assumption.…”

Cooperation through social influence

“…Social networks have become a huge interdisciplinary research area with important links to sociology, economics, epidemiology, computer science, and mathematics [37,19,2,34] (players face the choice of adopting a specific product or not; users choose among competing programs from providers of mobile telephones, having the option to adopt more than one product at an extra cost; etc.). A social network can be represented by a graph where each node is an agent and each edge represents the degree of influence of one agent over another one.…”