5 ms·

Best Connected Individuals Are Not the Most Influential in Social Networks

17 points by waterlesscloud 17y ago

pwoeifj 17y ago
how does this k-shell metric compare to, for example, pagerank?
yungchin 17y ago
For everyone like me who didn't understand the difference between an individual in a high k-shell and a hub: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-core http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-core clarifies it nicely. (it didn't help for searching that core and shell got interchanged :)) That is, you can be a hub in a low k-shell, if say, you live in a town where everyone knows everyone but only the mailman ever leaves town. Edit: in other words, this says that it's not about how many people you know, but how many highly-connected people you know. That's exactly what is usually informally meant by "well-connected".
- davi 17y ago
  See also this HN submission for the original article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097567 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097567 Figure 1d in the linked-to paper illustrates the difference between high k-shell and high k nicely. To quote from the paper (where k = # of edges a node has): "We start by removing all nodes with degree k = 1. After removing all the nodes with k = 1, some nodes may be left with one link, so we continue pruning the system iteratively until there is no node left with k = 1 in the network. The removed nodes, along with the corresponding links, form a k-shell with index kS = 1. In a similar fashion, we iteratively remove the next k-shell, kS = 2, and continue removing higher k-shells until all nodes are removed. As a result, each node is associated with a unique kS index, and the network can be viewed as the union of all k-shells."
jyothi 17y ago
Facebook and other large online networks should make an app with such interesting profile & network analysis data. Since it is available only to individuals they won't be letting too much out anyway they are still the gold mine of the data.
est 17y ago
Best connected in social networks: Anonymous
tybris 17y ago
> It's easy to imagine that because the links that form between various individuals in a society are not governed by any overarching rules, they must have a random structure. I don't find that easy to imagine at all. Social systems are full of rules.

how does this k-shell metric compare to, for example, pagerank?

For everyone like me who didn't understand the difference between an individual in a high k-shell and a hub: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-core http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-core clarifies it nicely. (it didn't help for searching that core and shell got interchanged :)) That is, you can be a hub in a low k-shell, if say, you live in a town where everyone knows everyone but only the mailman ever leaves town. Edit: in other words, this says that it's not about how many people you know, but how many highly-connected people you know. That's exactly what is usually informally meant by "well-connected".

davi 17y ago
See also this HN submission for the original article: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097567 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097567 Figure 1d in the linked-to paper illustrates the difference between high k-shell and high k nicely. To quote from the paper (where k = # of edges a node has): "We start by removing all nodes with degree k = 1. After removing all the nodes with k = 1, some nodes may be left with one link, so we continue pruning the system iteratively until there is no node left with k = 1 in the network. The removed nodes, along with the corresponding links, form a k-shell with index kS = 1. In a similar fashion, we iteratively remove the next k-shell, kS = 2, and continue removing higher k-shells until all nodes are removed. As a result, each node is associated with a unique kS index, and the network can be viewed as the union of all k-shells."

jyothi 17y ago

Facebook and other large online networks should make an app with such interesting profile & network analysis data. Since it is available only to individuals they won't be letting too much out anyway they are still the gold mine of the data.

est 17y ago

Best connected in social networks: Anonymous

tybris 17y ago

> It's easy to imagine that because the links that form between various individuals in a society are not governed by any overarching rules, they must have a random structure. I don't find that easy to imagine at all. Social systems are full of rules.