Study on the growth and decline of SNSs by using the infectious recovery SIR model

The dynamics of network services´ growth and decline is similar to infectious disease. So, it is expected that we can explain the growth and decline of a network service by using epidemiological models. The irSIR model is proposed as one of promising model for describing epidemiological transition of network services. To study the validity of applying the irSIR model, this paper focuses on SNSs transition occurred in Japan, and investigates the transition between SNSs by analyzing the sequence of the number of word searches of SNS. By comparing the well-known SIR model and irSIR model, we show that irSIR model gives better fitting to the real data. This result indicates that the transition of SNS is accelerated by invitation of new service users.