Social network is social networking services
which were created by six degrees of separation theory. Broadly speaking, all
interactive products whose main purpose is building relationships can be classified
as SNS such as Facebook, RenRen, Happy network, etc. In 1967, psychology
Professor Stanley Milgram from Harvard University founded six degrees of
separation theory. More specifically, the interval between you and any a
stranger would not be more than six, that is to say, you can know any a
stranger through the most six men. According to the six degrees of separation
theory, the social circle of any person keeps amplification, and finally become
a large network. This is an early understanding of social network. According to
this theory, social network was established for social internet services
through the acquaintances.
Recent research shows that social
networks not only have properties of small world and scale-free but also have
some common characters. Firstly, high clustering coefficient, in other word, the
friend of your friend is probably also your friend. Secondly, strong community,
it means that the social networks consist of several groups. And members of the
group relate closer, on the contrary, the relationship among groups drift apart.
People analyse the social relationships
of social networks by the network theory and graph. Just as Professor Rosanna
introduced in the class, each participant in the community is called an actor
and depicted as a node. And valued relations between actors are depicted as
links, or ties, either directed or undirected, between the corresponding nodes.
So the social network can be represented in the form of different kinds of
complex graph structures. There are many relationships between nodes of the
links.
Below list some spread modes of social
network:
Center
type
Center type spread is the most typical
transmission mode, fully shows the SNS information dissemination characteristics:
one-to-many. For example, when blogger post a new microblog, the followers receive
the updated information and repost the microblog. Therefore, the spread of the
microblog mainly concentrate in the circle which is at the centre of a blogger.
This mode of transimission is commonly seen in the microblog of celebrities, professional
organizations and some experts.
center type
Key
point
Key point spread can be divided into
the single point transmission and multiple point transmission. Single point transmission
means that a local center propagation point is formed outside the blogger. The transmission
amount of the microblog is more than the blogger itself. And multiple point
transmission means that multiple points play an
important role in the development of the microblog transmission. In this
mode, the transmission amount of the microblog is few at the beginning, but the
reposted amount would go up to the peak in the subsequent time. This mode of
transmission usually occurs in some microblogs of enterprises or organizations.
single point transmission
multiple point transmission
Chain
type
Chain type spread is a kind of minority
transmission mode. As shown in the figure, to take blogger as a starting point,
the information constantly spread towards a certain direction. Although the diffusivity
is not strong, it could maintain a long path. This mode of transmission is
commonly used in some private discussion and some technical related microblogs.
Relatively speaking, this way has less of an impact, also, the reliability rate
of this propagation way is not high.
chain type
Thank you for your introduction of different spread type. Now I know more about the modes in social network analysis. I think the real world SNS is a much more complicated modes composed by these simple modes.
回复删除For the key point, I think most of the time, it occurs when a tweet (which is generated by a common man) is retweeted by one or above very famous person.
btw, Which type do you thing is our classmates formed in BLOGGER?
Thanks for your reading, luosheng! I agree with you that the real world SNS is a much more complicated modes composed by these simple modes. And I think the chain type is our classmates formed in BLOGGER. Because this mode of transmission is commonly used in some private discussion and some technical related microblogs. And the Blogger we hold is concentrated in discussing the issues about the course of social networking.
删除woo...This blog really takes me some new ideas to analysis the social network, such as the key point and Chain type are both important model for us to deal with the sophisticated problmes.
回复删除In my opinion, I think the chain type are more suitable for our nomal situations,e.g,.weibo and facebook,the friend of your friend is probably also your friend,as you mentioned in your blog.
Thanks for your reading, my friend. Yes, I also think the chain type is an important mode existing at the social networks. As shown in the figure, to take blogger as a starting point, the information constantly spread towards a certain direction. Although the diffusivity is not strong, it could maintain a long path. However, there are many relationships between nodes of the links and what I have listed is some examples.
删除Generally speaking, some people who are followed(or related to) the key point or other center point may also follow(or link to) each other, just likes circles. Good article and point anyway. Thanks for your sharing.
回复删除Thank you for introducing several spread modes of social network,which are necessary for us to analyse complex social relationship.As we know,social network analysis,which focuses on relationships among social entities,is used widely in the social and behavioral sciences,as well as in economics,marketing,and industrial engineering.
回复删除Thanks for your careful reading, my friend. I agree with you that these several spread modes of social network are necessary for us to analyse complex social relationship. Because social networks not only have properties of small world and scale-free but also have some common characters. Actually, the social network can be represented in the form of different kinds of complex graph structures. And it is more complicate in the real life.
删除The socialgrams above on spread modes of social network really impress me. From my point of view, we can see many examples of multiple point transmission,like information spreading in company with several departments. leaders in each department represent the central points, of course, they are all important and informative. loads of subordernates receive the order/information from their leader, which represent the small nodes around.
回复删除the chain type do a great job, too. actually we find it very useful to build the basic model of our reality relationship. but i do wonder, if in my blog i just focus on funny things and famous people, it seems to be a haphazard distribution.so what's the point if this happen?
删除Wow~Thank you for sharing these spread modes of social network in detail. Analyzing the spread modes of social network helps to grasp the complex relationship in social network and research the psychology in social network. For example, we know the rumor in social network can be spread quickly, so if we want to find the source of rumor, we can look for the key point.
回复删除Yes, maybe we could find the source of some rumor through the key point mode. But there are many relationships between nodes and our real social network is more complicated than I have analysed. So it is necessary for us to do more research and explore the social networks. And I think it is an interesting to analyse the complicate network and make it easier for others to understand.
删除It's interesting that your article focus on different types of graph. Yeah I think with specific example we can understand social network more easily.
回复删除Single point transmission and multiple point transmission are only the special situation of chain type so maybe deep research on chain type would be more helpful.
In this Social Network Analysis, you express the knowledge of six degrees of separation theory, it's very good for us to know more about the SNA. And you focus on the modes of social network such as Center type and Chain type with awesome graph.
回复删除In chain type, I think that maybe everyone in the chain is the "key point" because if he don't participate in this social network, one side of him won't be connected with the other side, then the chain breaks and forms two separate parts.
It's useful for us to study SNA more deeply.
It is really interesting to see that "you can know any stranger through the most six men". I suppose this intuitive conclusion is obtained above the foundation of large amount of social network users and more importantly, developed SNA theories. What makes SNA quite amazing is that it initiates from watching user behaviors, then it performs the math, finally it could draw results from the analysis which has real simple but very practical meanings instead of some complicated and abstract math representations. Actually, the statement reminds me of your first blog about human flesh search and now we finally know how it works. So maybe we can say that SNA is a double-edged sword as well.
回复删除Thank you for sharing the information about the spread modes
回复删除I have heard about "Six degree of separation theory", but i did not link it with social networking, our course until reading your blog. I can not agree more about your words. And the spread modes you list is clear.
回复删除This article inspires me a lot. As we know, though the six degrees of separation theory sheds light on the “smallness”of the society, it is still quiet difficult to build the mathematical model of social networking: 1. the route between one person to another is not unique; 2. the acquaintance vary a lot in the social network. Sometimes we have to use a complex neural model with nodes, links and weights to depict the spread of information. However, the problem is simplified in micro-blog ecosystem. A micro-blog usually spreads from one to another by a unique and "fastest" route. I think micro-blog will play a critical role in summarizing and validating conclusion in SNA research.
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