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All Online Friends Are Not Created Equal: Discovering Influence Structure in Online Social Networks

Xi Chen, Chong (Alex) Wang, Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang

Research output: Chapters, Conference Papers, Creative and Literary WorksRGC 32 - Refereed conference paper (with host publication)peer-review

Abstract

Online social networking services generate an online map of socially connected individuals. All online friends are not created equal. Despite similarity in information exposure, two different online contacts of an individual may exert significantly different influence. First, online contacts of a user could be grouped into different categories, between which the strength of influence differs. Second, ties within each category also differ. A Bayesian model is proposed to describe and estimate the influence structure on top of the network structure taking both user-reported categories and behavior observation into consideration. Our results show that there is significant heterogeneity in the social influence structure. We further identify how individual-level influence structure relates to other user characteristics.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationICEC '12 - Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Electronic Commerce
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages276-277
ISBN (Print)978-1-4503-1197-7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2012
Event14th Annual International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC 2012) - Singapore Management University, Singapore
Duration: 6 Aug 20128 Aug 2012

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference14th Annual International Conference on Electronic Commerce (ICEC 2012)
PlaceSingapore
Period6/08/128/08/12

Research Keywords

  • category complexity
  • heterogeneous tie strength
  • online social network
  • reversible jump MCMC
  • social influence

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