This Article 
   
 Share 
   
 Bibliographic References 
   
 Add to: 
 
Digg
Furl
Spurl
Blink
Simpy
Google
Del.icio.us
Y!MyWeb
 
 Search 
   
Homophily in the Digital World: A LiveJournal Case Study
March/April 2010 (vol. 14 no. 2)
pp. 15-23
ASCII Text
x 
 
Hady W. Lauw, John C. Shafer, Rakesh Agrawal, Alexandros Ntoulas, "Homophily in the Digital World: A LiveJournal Case Study," IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 15-23, March/April, 2010.
 
 
BibTex
x
 
@article{ 10.1109/MIC.2010.25,
author = {Hady W. Lauw and John C. Shafer and Rakesh Agrawal and Alexandros Ntoulas},
title = {Homophily in the Digital World: A LiveJournal Case Study},
journal ={IEEE Internet Computing},
volume = {14},
number = {2},
issn = {1089-7801},
year = {2010},
pages = {15-23},
doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MIC.2010.25},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA},
}
 
 
RefWorks Procite/RefMan/Endnote
x 
 
TY - MGZN
JO - IEEE Internet Computing
TI - Homophily in the Digital World: A LiveJournal Case Study
IS - 2
SN - 1089-7801
SP15
EP23
EPD - 15-23
A1 - Hady W. Lauw,
A1 - John C. Shafer,
A1 - Rakesh Agrawal,
A1 - Alexandros Ntoulas,
PY - 2010
KW - homophily
KW - friendship
KW - interest
KW - social network
KW - Internet
VL - 14
JA - IEEE Internet Computing
ER -
 
Hady W. Lauw, Search Labs, Microsoft Research
John C. Shafer, Search Labs, Microsoft Research
Rakesh Agrawal, Search Labs, Microsoft Research
Alexandros Ntoulas, Search Labs, Microsoft Research
Are two users more likely to be friends if they share common interests? Are two users more likely to share common interests if they're friends? The authors study the phenomenon of homophily in the digital world by answering these central questions. Unlike the physical world, the digital world doesn't impose any geographic or organizational constraints on friendships. So, although online friends might share common interests, a priori there's no reason to believe that two users with common interests are more likely to be friends. Using data from LiveJournal, the authors show that the answer to both questions is yes.

1. M. McPherson, L. Smith-Lovin, and J.M. Cook, "Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks," Ann. Rev. Sociology, Aug. 2001, pp. 415–444.
2. D. Watts and S. Strogatz, "Collective Dynamics of Small-World Networks," Nature, vol. 393, no. 6684, 1998, pp. 440–442.
3. A. Gionis et al., "Assessing Data Mining Results via Swap Randomization," ACM Trans. Knowledge Discovery from Data, vol. 1, no. 3, 2007, art. 14.
4. G. Jeh and J. Widom, "Scaling Personalized Web Search," Proc. World Wide Web Conf. (WWW 03), ACM Press, 2003, pp. 271–279.
5. M. Richardson, R. Agrawal, and P. Domingos, "Trust Management for the Semantic Web," Proc. Int'l Semantic Web Conf., Springer, 2003, pp. 351–368.
6. S.P. Borgatti and M.G. Everett, "Network Analysis of 2-mode Data," Social Networks, vol. 19, no. 3, 1997, pp. 243–269.
1. D. Crandall et al., "Feedback Effects between Similarity and Social Influence in Online Communities," Proc. ACM SIGKDD Int'l Conf. Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 08), ACM Press, 2008, pp. 160…168.
2. P. Singla and M. Richardson, "Yes, There Is a Correlation … from Social Networks to Personal Behavior on the Web," Proc. World Wide Web Conf. (WWW 08), ACM Press, 2008, pp. 655…664.
3. L.A. Adamic and E. Adar, "Friends and Neighbors on the Web," Social Networks, vol. 25, no. 3, 2003, pp. 211…230.
4. E. Gilbert and K. Karahalios, "Predicting Tie Strength with Social Media," Proc. Int'l Conf. Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 09), ACM Press, 2009, pp. 211…220.

Index Terms:
homophily, friendship, interest, social network, Internet
Citation:
Hady W. Lauw, John C. Shafer, Rakesh Agrawal, Alexandros Ntoulas, "Homophily in the Digital World: A LiveJournal Case Study," IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 15-23, March-April 2010, doi:10.1109/MIC.2010.25
Usage of this product signifies your acceptance of the Terms of Use.