JISAR

Journal of Information Systems Applied Research

Volume 7

V7 N4 Pages 14-24

November 2014


Similarity and Ties in Social Networks A Study of the YouTube Social Network


Amir Afrasiabi Rad
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada

Morad Benyoucef
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada

Abstract: Social networks and the propagation of content within social networks have received an extensive attention during the past few years. Social network content propagation is believed to depend on the similarity of users as well as on the existence of friends in the social network. Our former investigation of the YouTube social network showed that strangers (non-friends and non-followers) play a more important role in content propagation than friends. In this paper, we analyze user communities within the YouTube social network and apply various similarity measures on them. We investigate the degree of similarity in communities versus the entire social network. We found that communities are formed from similar users. At the same time, we found that there are no large similarity values between friends in YouTube communities.

Keywords: Social Network Analysis, Similarity, Social Ties, Influence, YouTube

Download this article: JISAR - V7 N4 Page 14.pdf


Recommended Citation: Afrasiabi Rad, A., Benyoucef, M. (2014). Similarity and Ties in Social Networks A Study of the YouTube Social Network . Journal of Information Systems Applied Research, 7(4) pp 14-24. http://jisar.org/2014-7/ ISSN: 1946-1836. (A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of CONISAR 2013)