Is It The Clumps Or The Links That Make Networks Interesting?

from the look-for-the-clumps dept

Roland Piquepaille writes "So-called social networking is very popular these days, as show the proliferation of services like Friendster, Orkut and dozens of others. But do the companies behind these services have any idea of what is hidden inside their complicated networks? When these networks reach a size of millions of users, it's not an easy task. A researcher at the University of Michigan is trying to help, with a new method for uncovering patterns in complicated networks, from football conferences to food webs. My blog contains more details and references about this non-traditional method. It also includes a spectacular representation of the Internet and another image showing a food web at Little Rock Lake." Actually, I think the more interesting aspect of this research is the fact that they're trying to determine "clumps" of related activity by actively ignoring the explicit links between them, and then seeing if the assumed clumps are actually linked together. While so many of these social networking sites are focused on making links explicit, this suggests that there might be another way to do things, focused on letting the system do the grouping based on who should be linked, rather than forcing people to make (somewhat arbitrary) explicit links.

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