Refereed Papers

Track: Social Networks: Analysis of Social Networks & Online Interactive Spaces

Paper Title:
Yes, There is a Correlation - From Social Networks to Personal Behavior on the Web

Authors:

• Parag Singla(University of Washington)
• Matthew Richardson(Microsoft Research)

Abstract:
Characterizing the relationship that exists between a person's social group and his/her personal behavior has been a long standing goal of social network analysts. In this paper, we apply data mining techniques to study this relationship for a population of over 10 million people, by turning to online sources of data. The analysis reveals that people who chat with each other (using instant messaging) are more likely to share interests (their Web searches are the same or topically similar). The more time they spend talking, the stronger this relationship is. People who chat with each other are also more likely to share other personal characteristics, such as their age and location (and, they are likely to be of opposite gender). Similar findings hold for people who do not necessarily talk to each other but do have a friend in common. Our analysis is based on a well-defined mathematical formulation of the problem, and is the largest such study we are aware of.

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