A Study on Social Network Metrics and Their Application in Trust Networks

Social network analysis has recently gained a lot of interest because of the advent and the increasing popularity of social media, such as blogs, social networks, micro logging, or customer review sites. Such media often serve as platforms for information dissemination and product placement or promotion. In this environment, influence and trust are becoming essential qualities among user interactions. In this work, we perform an extensive study of various metrics related to the aforementioned elements, and their effect in the process of information propagation in the virtual world. In order to better understand the properties of links and the dynamics of social networks, we distinguish between permanent and transient links and in the latter case, we consider the link freshness. Moreover, we distinguish between local and global influence and compare suggestions provided by locally or globally trusted users.