Article,
Composition and Structure of a Large Online Social Network in the Netherlands
PLoS ONE, 7 (4): e34760 (April 2012)
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034760
Abstract
<p>Limitations in data collection have long been an obstacle in research on friendship networks. Most earlier studies use either a sample of ego-networks, or complete network data on a relatively small group (e.g., a single organization). The rise of online social networking services such as Friendster and Facebook, however, provides researchers with opportunities to study friendship networks on a much larger scale. This study uses complete network data from Hyves, a popular online social networking service in the Netherlands, comprising over eight million members and over 400 million online friendship relations. In the first study of its kind for the Netherlands, I examine the structure of this network in terms of the degree distribution, characteristic path length, clustering, and degree assortativity. <xref ref-type="sec" rid="s3">Results</xref> indicate that this network shares features of other large complex networks, but also deviates in other respects. In addition, a comparison with other online social networks shows that these networks show remarkable similarities.</p>
