Empirical analysis of online social networks in the age of Web 2.0 (summary)

The development of social collaborative technologies, such as blogs, Wiki, and social networking sites (SNS), result in an extraordinarily fast growing online virtual community. The concept of Web 2.0 is very popular. In blogsphere and SNS, users can conviniently create and joinn communities or groups who share the same interests and activities. Blogging networks and SNS can be viewed as representative online social networks in the age of Web 2.0. The paper focus on two Chinese online social networks, Sina blogs and Xiaonei SNS. Both the networks have small-world and scale-free features already observed in real-world and artificial networks. More of the observation about the correlation between degree (in/out) and degree (in/out), clustering coefficient and degree, popularity (in terms of number of page views) and in-degree (for the blogging network). Also about the blogging network is a disassortative mixing pattern in general and the Xiaonei network as an assortative one. The top two realistic networks obtained in the study, simulations of dynamic processes can be integrated to invenstigate spreading process (information, gossip), evolution of cooperation, etc.