Understanding co-evolution in large multi-relational social networks

Understanding dynamics of evolution in large social networks is an important problem. In this paper, we characterize evolution in large multi-relational social networks. The proliferation of online media such as Twitter, Facebook, Orkut and MMORPGs¹ have created social networking data at an unprecedented scale. Sony´s Everquest II is one such example. We used game multi-relational networks to reveal the dynamics of evolution in a multi-relational setting by macroscopic study of the game network. Macroscopic analysis involves fragmenting the network into smaller portions for studying the dynamics within these sub-networks, referred to as `communities´. From an evolutionary perspective of multi-relational network analysis, we have made the following contributions. Specifically, we formulated and analyzed various metrics to capture evolutionary properties of networks. We find that co-evolution rates in trust based `communities´ are approximately 60% higher than the trade based `communities´. We also find that the trust and trade connections within the `communities´ reduce as their size increases. Finally, we study the interrelation between the dynamics of trade and trust within `communities´ and find interesting results about the precursor relationship between the trade and the trust dynamics within the `communities´.