Understanding lurking behaviors in social networks across time

Mining the silent members, also called lurkers, of an online community has been recognized as an important problem that accompanies the extensive use of social networks. Existing solutions to the ranking of lurkers can aid understanding the lurking behaviors in social networks, however they ignore any information concerning the time dimension. In this work we push forward research in lurker mining by providing an analysis of temporal aspects that aims to unveil the behavior of lurkers and their interrelations with other users. Our analysis builds upon four research questions, which encompass relations between lurkers and inactive users, relations between lurkers and active users, the responsiveness behavior of lurkers, and the evolution of lurking trends across time. Evaluation has been conducted on Flickr, FriendFeed and Instagram networks.