How to search a social network

Details How to search a social network How to search a social network

2003-10-06

arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0310120v2

Physics

Condensed Matter

Other Condensed Matter

20 pages, 9 figures. This version contains updated figures, comments, and discussion

Scientific paper

We address the question of how participants in a small world experiment are able to find short paths in a social network using only local information about their immediate contacts. We simulate such experiments on a network of actual email contacts within an organization as well as on a student social networking website. On the email network we find that small world search strategies using a contact's position in physical space or in an organizational hierarchy relative to the target can effectively be used to locate most individuals. However, we find that in the online student network, where the data is incomplete and hierarchical structures are not well defined, local search strategies are less effective. We compare our findings to recent theoretical hypotheses about underlying social structure that would enable these simple search strategies to succeed and discuss the implications to social software design.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

How to search a social network does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with How to search a social network, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and How to search a social network will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-344535