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- Title
Identity and search in social networks.
- Authors
Watts, Duncan J; Dodds, Peter Sheridan; Newman, M E J
- Abstract
Social networks have the surprising property of being "searchable": Ordinary people are capable of directing messages through their network of acquaintances to reach a specific but distant target person in only a few steps. We present a model that offers an explanation of social network searchability in terms of recognizable personal identities: sets of characteristics measured along a number of social dimensions. Our model defines a class of searchable networks and a method for searching them that may be applicable to many network search problems, including the location of data files in peer-to-peer networks, pages on the World Wide Web, and information in distributed databases.
- Publication
Science (New York, N.Y.), 2002, Vol 296, Issue 5571, p1302
- ISSN
1095-9203
- Publication type
Journal Article
- DOI
10.1126/science.1070120