Social Network
Priyanka Agrawal
Abstract
• Social Networks to keep in touch with friends, family and
community
• Newer Web 2.0 technologies encourage Social Networking
• Security and privacy, market and technological factors to be
considered while developing social networks.
Introduction
• Web 2.0 focuses on openness, read-write paradigms
encouraging Social Networking
• Globalization – a concept by Barry Wellman, the capacity of
the Internet to expand users and bind them more deeply
• The nature of Social Network sites due to on-line, interactive
and relatively open environment introduces various privacy
and security risks
Nature of Social Networks
• Social Structure made of nodes that are tied by one or more
specific types of relations
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Classmates.com, first social networking website in 1995
LinkedIn towards business professionals
Ancestry.com and Geni.com to find family tree
“MySpace” most popular social networking site
Facebook and Orkut, geared towards teens and young
Nature of Social Networks
Nature of Social Networks – Cont..
Nature of Social Networks – Cont..
Privacy Implications
• The lack of face to face communication provides a false sense
of security
• Protecting personal information & Fair representation online
is an important cautionary measure
eg., ebay
• On-line identity presented correctly or misrepresented and its
implications is an interesting question
• Privacy issues like blogs, online social networks by end user
Eg., FOAF can expose private information, LinkedIn, Myspace
• Instances that revealed classified information because of
easily viewable and carelessly posted resulting lawsuits and
heavy financial damages
Privacy Implications – Cont..
• Limiting access by limited audience
• Posted content and control consequences associated with
Privacy breaches for user
• Security profiles determine level and extent of privacy
flexibility eg., orkut
• Future Social Network should have security profiles with
privacy settings for all Permutations and Communications
• Privacy Warning Server generates warnings for end users and
make them aware of any privacy loopholes
Security Considerations for Online
Communities
1. Abuse, Inappropriate content, Identity theft and
other threats
• Problems: Child abuse, nudity and harassment
• On-line harassment or cyber stalking can range from annoying to
deadly
• Identity theft is major problem
eg., register on MySpace and pass on comments
• Flexibility to post inappropriate videos on YouTube
• Setting limits, choosing audience and controlling contents for safety
• Defining different levels of access is an important element
Security Considerations for Online
Communities
2. Legal Issues
• Service account legalities, material legalities, contract issues
with the provider, copyright and trademark issues, third party
issues , different liabilities
eg., Two criminals meet on Myspace and plan robbery.
Who is liable for such an act?
• Trademark and copyright issues on content posted on
websites
Security Considerations for Online
Communities
3. Technological Issues
• Web 2.0 can create vulnerabilities like RSS, Trackback,
Pingback, Tagging etc
• A malicious advertiser creates an inappropriate tag at a page
to promote his business
• VoIP framework can launch attacks like SYN attack etc
Network Considerations for Online
Communities
1. Boundedness
The proportion of network member ties that stay within
boundaries of the social network.
Eg. Health related Social Networks
Marketing Social Networks
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Ensure relationships between nodes to evolve with
boundedness desired
Network Considerations for Online
Communities
2. Density
Proportion of all possible ties that actually exist
eg. Organizational teams should be denser than one
• IT designers should create desired density, like online
messaging for dense networks and offline messaging for
sparse networks
Network Considerations for Online
Communities
3. Exclusivity
people interact primarily one to one or are their individual
contacts available to a wider set of persons
eg., chain partners
C2C ecommerce
4. Social Control
External sources create, constrain and manages a person’s
contacts and exchanges.
eg., Intra-organizational teams
Inter-organizational teams
Network Considerations for Online
Communities
5. Network Externality
Extent to which a network is useful
eg., MySpace
• Developers make sure the frameworks enable more and more
usefulness
Network Considerations for Online
Communities
6. Range
Large and diverse population with its boundaries
eg., School
• Network designs should address these ranges
Network Considerations for Online
Communities
7. Strength of Ties
• Probably linear combination of the amount of time, emotional
intensity, the intimacy and reciprocal services
• Network of friends should ensure provision of reciprocal
services and emotional interaction
• LinkedIn should be designed accordingly
Network Considerations for Online
Communities
8. Network Centralization
Less centralized network has lesser chances of failure
• Evenly distributed nodes are better in failure scenarios
9. Degree Centrality
quality of connections and not their quantity
Network Considerations for Online
Communities
10. Between Centrality
• Node with high between's has great influence over what flows
and has more power
• Networks should be designed as minimum number of nodes
in central positions
• Shorter global path benefits the entire network
Market and Technological
Considerations
1. Market Considerations
• Applications: Emergency purposes such as campus emergency
• The key is to find right stakeholders and carry out
requirement analysis
• Vertical social networks for richer interactions
eg., pharmaceutical industry
LinkedIn
Market and Technological
Considerations
2. Technology Considerations
• Web 2.0: self evolution, collaboration and participation
Eg., BigAdda.com by Reliance Corp
• AJAX trend for rich user interfaces
• Such technologies are important consideration for faster
transaction processing and help rich user interfaces
Market and Technological
Considerations
Market and Technological
Considerations
Visualization of Networks
• Visual representation of social networks is important to
understand the network data and convey the result of the
analysis.
• Various new methods have been developed in order to display
network data in more intuitive format (e.g. Sociomapping).
Method: Sociomapping
• Method developed for processing and visualization of
relational data
• Spatial orientation and movement detection
• Principle: transform relational data into visual format
• Applications: groups and populations
Sociomapping – Small Systems
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Social distance
Psychological distance
Communication distance
Other relation measures
Variable coded in Height of subject includes social status,
performance, indicators of subject, average communication
frequency etc
Sociomapping – Large Systems
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Political research
Marketing research
Customer segmentation
And other research concerned with preferences and/or
attitudes
• Broader scope of Application: Historical events analysis,
Internet community tools, Literature analysis, Military units
and human spaceflight crews analysis, Sport analysis and
forecast, Politics analysis and forecast, team building and
team analysis
Tool: Team Profile Analyzer
• Tool for psychologists, consultants, managers and HR
specialists
• Enables integration of information about team from
personality, performance or knowledge tests and biographical
data
• Team analysis and development; team coaching, team
building, recruitment etc
Main Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis_softwa
re
Social Network Tools
• For scholarly research tools like UCINet, Pajek , ORA, the statnet suite
of packages in R, and GUESS are popular.
• Business oriented social network tools
include iPoint , NetMiner, InFlow, Keyhubs, Sentinel Visualizer , KXEN
Social Network, NodeXL. For large networks with millions of nodes,
try Sonamine. For mobile telecoms Idiro SNA Plus is recommended
• An open source package with GUI for Linux, Windows and Mac,
is Social Networks Visualizer or SocNetV, developed in Qt/C++.
• Another generic open source package for Windows, Linux and OS X
with interfaces to Python and R is "igraph"
• Another generic open source package with [GUI] for Windows, Linux
and OS X is "Tulip"
• For Mac OS X a related package installer of SocNetV is available.
• For integrated egocentric data collection and
visualization SocioMetrica
Conclusion
• The extent to consider the technological and market factors to
improve effectiveness of networks
• Constantly think of introducing new features in terms of
applicability, usefulness and audience
• Differentiations on both dimensions determine effectiveness
and efficiency
• Security and privacy issues with innovation features
References