Jure Leskovec
Eric Horvitz
ABSTRACT
We present a study of anonymized data capturing a month of high-level communication activities within the whole of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging system. We examine characteristics and patterns that emerge from the collective dynamics of large numbers of people, rather than the actions and characteristics of individuals. The dataset contains summary properties of 30 billion conversations among 240 million people. From the data, we construct a communication graph with 180 million nodes and 1.3 billion undirected edges, creating the largest social network constructed and analyzed to date. We report on multiple aspects of the dataset and synthesized graph. We find that the graph is well-connected and robust to node removal. We investigate on a planetary-scale the oft-cited report that people are separated by "six degrees of separation" and find that the average path length among Messenger users is 6.6. We find that people tend to communicate more with each other when they have similar age, language, and location, and that cross-gender conversations are both more frequent and of longer duration than conversations with the same gender.
- R. Albert, H. Jeong, and A.-L. Barabasi. Error and attack tolerance of complex networks. Nature, 406:378, 2000.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- J. I. Alvarez-Hamelin, L. Dall'Asta, A. Barrat, and A. Vespignani. Analysis and visualization of large scale networks using the k-core decomposition. In ECCS '05: European Conference on Complex Systems, 2005.Google Scholar
- D. Avrahami and S. E. Hudson. Communication characteristics of instant messaging: effects and predictions of interpersonal relationships. In CSCW '06, pages 505--514, 2006. Google ScholarDigital Library
- A.-L. Barabasi. The origin of bursts and heavy tails in human dynamics. Nature, 435:207, 2005.Google ScholarCross Ref
- V. Batagelj and M. Zaversnik. Generalized cores. ArXiv, (cs.DS/0202039), Feb 2002.Google Scholar
- IDC Market Analysis. Worldwide Enterprise Instant Messaging Applications 2005--2009 Forecast and 2004 Vendor Shares: Clearing the Decks for Substantial Growth. 2005.Google Scholar
- J. Leskovec and E. Horvitz. Worldwide Buzz: Planetary-Scale Views on an Instant-Messaging Network. Tech. report MSR-TR-2006-186, 2006.Google Scholar
- P. V. Marsden. Core discussion networks of americans. American Sociological Review, 52(1):122--131, 1987.Google ScholarCross Ref
- M. McPherson, L. Smith-Lovin, and J. M. Cook. Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27(1):415--444, 2001.Google ScholarCross Ref
- B. A. Nardi, S. Whittaker, and E. Bradner. Interaction and outeraction: instant messaging in action. In CSCW '00: Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, pages 79--88, 2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
- E. Ravasz and A.-L. Barabasi. Hierarchical organization in complex networks. Physical Review E, 67(2):026112, 2003.Google ScholarCross Ref
- E. M. Rogers and D. K. Bhowmik. Homophily-heterophily: Relational concepts for communication research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 34:523--538, 1970.Google ScholarCross Ref
- X. Shi, L. A. Adamic, and M. J. Strauss. Networks of strong ties. Physica A Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 378:33--47, May 2007.Google ScholarCross Ref
- P. Singla and M. Richardson. Yes, there is a correlation - from social networks to personal behavior on the web. In WWW '08, 2008. Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. P. Stumpf, C. Wiuf, R. M. May. Subnets of scale-free networks are not scale-free: sampling properties of networks. PNAS, 102(12), 2005.Google Scholar
- S. L. Tauro, C. Palmer, G. Siganos, and M. Faloutsos. A simple conceptual model for the internet topology. In GLOBECOM '01, vol. 3, pages 1667--1671, 2001.Google ScholarCross Ref
- J. Travers and S. Milgram. An experimental study of the small world problem. Sociometry, 32(4), 1969.Google Scholar
- A. Voida, W. C. Newstetter, and E. D. Mynatt. When conventions collide: the tensions of instant messaging attributed. In CHI '02, pages 187--194, 2002. Google ScholarDigital Library
- D. J. Watts and S. H. Strogatz. Collective dynamics of 'small-world' networks. Nature, 393:440--442, 1998.Google ScholarCross Ref
- X. Xiao, L. Guo, and J. Tracey. Understanding instant messaging traffic characteristics. In ICDCS '07, 2007. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Planetary-scale views on a large instant-messaging network
Recommendations
The concurrent and longitudinal relationships between adolescents' use of social network sites and their social self-esteem
The first aim of this study was to investigate the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between adolescents' use of social network sites (SNSs) and their social self-esteem. The second aim was to investigate whether the valence of the feedback that ...
Instant Messaging on Campus: Use and Integration in University Students' Everyday Communication
This article reviews the body of research on the use and role of instant messaging (IM) in campus life, and how IM is a key part of university students' communication. IM is a synchronous form of communication, and its speed, availability information, ...
The mediator role of self-disclosure and moderator roles of gender and social anxiety in the relationship between Chinese adolescents' online communication and their real-world social relationships
Based on theory and previous research, we examined relationships among gender, social anxiety, self-disclosure, quality of real-world friendships and online communication by Chinese adolescent Internet users. Results indicated that online communication ...
Comments