A Model for Scale-Free Networks: Application to Twitter
Instituto de Tecnologías Físicas y de la Información “Leonardo Torres Quevedo”, CSIC, C/Serrano 144, 28006 Madrid, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: J. A. Tenreiro Machado
Entropy 2015, 17(8), 5848-5867; https://doi.org/10.3390/e17085848
Received: 23 April 2015 / Revised: 10 August 2015 / Accepted: 11 August 2015 / Published: 17 August 2015
(This article belongs to the Section Complexity)
In the last few years, complex networks have become an increasingly relevant research topic due to the large number of fields of application. Particularly, complex networks are especially significant in the area of modern online social networks (OSNs). OSNs are actually a challenge for complex network analysis, as they present some characteristics that hinder topology processing. Concretely, social networks’ volume is exceedingly big, as they have a high number of nodes and links. One of the most popular and influential OSNs is Twitter. In this paper, we present a model to describe the growth of scale-free networks. This model is applied to Twitter after checking that it can be considered a “scale-free” complex network fulfilling the small world property. Checking this property involves the calculation of the shortest path between any two nodes of the network. Given the difficulty of this computation for large networks, a new heuristic method is also proposed to find the upper bounds of the path lengths instead of computing the exact length.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
complex networks; scale-free networks; small world property; Twitter; modeling
▼
Show Figures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Aparicio, S.; Villazón-Terrazas, J.; Álvarez, G. A Model for Scale-Free Networks: Application to Twitter. Entropy 2015, 17, 5848-5867. https://doi.org/10.3390/e17085848
AMA Style
Aparicio S, Villazón-Terrazas J, Álvarez G. A Model for Scale-Free Networks: Application to Twitter. Entropy. 2015; 17(8):5848-5867. https://doi.org/10.3390/e17085848
Chicago/Turabian StyleAparicio, Sofía; Villazón-Terrazas, Javier; Álvarez, Gonzalo. 2015. "A Model for Scale-Free Networks: Application to Twitter" Entropy 17, no. 8: 5848-5867. https://doi.org/10.3390/e17085848
Find Other Styles
Search more from Scilit