Stable Statistics of the Blogograph

Abstract

The primary focus of this paper is to describe stable statistics of the blogosphere’s evolution which convey information on the social network’s dynamics. In this paper, we present a number of non-trivial statistics that are surprisingly stable and thus can be used as benchmarks to diagnose phase-transitions in the network. We believe that stable statistics can be used to identify anomalous behavior at all levels: that of a node, of a local community, or of the entire network itself. Any substantial change in those stable statistics must alert the researchers and analysts to the need for further investigation. Furthermore, the usage of these or similar statistics that are based solely on the communication dynamics and not on the communication content, allows one to diagnose anomalous behavior with minimal intrusion of privacy.