Elsevier

The Social Networks journal has published the first of its two special issues on network dynamcis: Dynamics of Social Networks edited by Patrick Doreian, Tom A.B. Snijders.

From the editors:

“This journal issue contains the first of two connected special issues on Dynamics of Social Networks. This second special issue will appear later this year. For a rather long time, attention to dynamic aspects in Social Network Analysis took the form of descriptive studies. However, over the last fifteen years model-based approaches to studying network change have been flowering. Landmarks were three special issues on Network Evolution of the Journal of Mathematical Sociology, edited by Frans Stokman and Patrick Doreian, in 1996 (with a book version: Doreian and Stokman, 1997 In: P. Doreian and F.N. Stokman, Editors, Evolution of Social Networks, Gordon and Breach Publishers, Amsterdam (1997).Doreian and Stokman, 1997), 2001, and 2003. These three special issues demonstrated how formal and statistical modeling and empirical analysis were coming together. The 2001 and 2003 special issues were focused on joining of theoretical developments with the analysis of empirical data using advanced modeling. This special issue presents a continuation of jointly using theories and modeling to understand social network phenomena.”

It seems that social networking sites are almost “old news” these days. As a media platform, social networking sites (SNS) have been around since the late 1990s, and today the popular SNS Facebook.com boasts more than 350 million active users (nevermind all those people who’ve registered for accounts never to actually use them).

So what’s next for SNS? For 2010, geo-tagging and geo-targeting appear to be the latest trends. The AP recently reported on the emergence of the SNS Foursquare.com as one of the latest buzz-sites. What’s the buzz about? Foursquare – which currently has over 100,000 users in 100 cities – is basically a social network for your immediate circle of friends (and a way to meet people nearby). You report where you’re at currently, and where you’ve been recently, and it’s mapped and tracked on Foursquare. The catch is, you earn points for checking in to locations, and the most recent person to check in becomes the “mayor”. So you compete against your friends to earn points. It sounds simple, but can become very addictive.

Foursquare isn’t alone. A number of other companies are venturing into the geo-SNS space. Google recently launched Latitude, phones are increasingly supporting GPS, and Windows 7 and Mac’s Snow Leopard will soon be enable to actively report location for laptop users.

Not that this is anything new for academics. In 2007, Lee Humphreys (now at Cornell University‘s Department of Communication) wrote an article looking how users form social groups and social ties in mobile networks. What’s so new in 2010? For one, there’s a much large network of resources available for users of these networks. With more and more users having GPS-enabled devices, it’s easier to share your location with others. And the evolution of SNS has made people more comfortable with the notion that others will know where you’re at. Advertisers are tapping into this trend too, as Ad Age notes in an article this week. Geo-SNS and geo-targeting are allowing advertisers to target consumers based not only on what they do, but also where they are at.

Interesting right? And for us, as researchers, the relationship between “location” and “network formation” looks to be an area for future work. Happy Holidays.

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• Will Facebook buy Foursquare? (thenextweb.com)
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The Washington Post has a new article citing Cacioppo’s article in the Descember issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The article focuses on how loneliness can spread through social networks using data from the Framingham study.

As the article says,”Although it may sound counterintuitive, loneliness can spread from one person to another, according to research being released Tuesday that underscores the power of one person’s emotions to affect friends, family and neighbors.” The article concludes, “The findings underscore the importance of social networks, several experts said. ‘For years, physicians and researchers thought about individuals as isolated creatures,’ said Stanley Wasserman, who studies social networks at Indiana University. ‘We now know that the people you surround yourself with can have a tremendous impact on your well-being, whether it’s physical or psychological.’”

Full article here

A November 26th, 2009, column in The Los Angeles Times, titled “A Connected Life is a Great Gift” discusses the importance of social networks during the holiday season.  The authors James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis summarize some of the findings presented in their new book Connected, focusing how at this time of the year, keeping your friends and family around is important.  They write:

“Recent research has shown that we would rather give an anonymous gift to a friend who will never repay us than give a gift to a stranger who will. The reason is that we give to sustain our network. In fact, the natural advantages of a connected life explain why social networks have been with us for hundreds of thousands of years. So as we gather for the holidays, it is important to consider the extraordinary power of our social networks. We not only help ourselves by staying connected, we also help our whole community.”

Full article here

Does the online collection of ego-centered network data reduce data quality? An experimental comparison

Elsevier’s Social Networks journal has published a corrected proof of a paper written by Uwe Matzat and Chris Snijders comparing the quality of ego-network data collected online vs. offline.

Elsevier

Paper abstract:

“We analyze whether differences in kind and quality of ego-centered network data are related to whether the data are collected online or offline. We report the results of two studies. In the first study respondents could choose between filling out ego-centered data through a web questionnaire and being probed about their network in a personalized interview. The second study used a design in which respondents were allocated at random to either online or offline data collection. Our results show that the data quality suffers from the online data collection and the findings indicate that this is the consequence of the respondents answering “mechanically”. We conclude that network researchers should avoid to simply copy traditional network items into a web questionnaire. More research is needed about how new design elements specific for web questionnaires can motivate respondents to fill out network questions properly.”

In the New York Times Magazine, Clive Thompson writes an extensive article on Christakis’ and Fowler’s user of the Framingham Study to examine contagion processes of social behaviors. The article includes interviews with a variety of social networks researchers and a good analysis and critique of Christakis’ and Fowler’s conclusions. The article states: “IT’S TEMPTING TO think, confronted by Christakis and Fowler’s work, that the best way to improve your life is to simply cut your ties to people with bad behavior. And obviously this is possible; people change their friends often, sometimes abruptly. But reshaping your social network may be more challenging than altering your behavior. There’s also compelling evidence in their research that we do not have as much control as we might think we do over the way we’re linked to other people: our location in a social network, say, or how many of our friends know each other.” To read the full article, click here.