Social network and choice of mobile phone operator

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to estimate the importance of (induced) network effects in the use of mobile telephones and the impact of the structure of social networks on a consumer’s adoption decision. This is done using social network data obtained from a survey of second year undergraduate students at the University of Nottingham Business School. We find that students strongly coordinate their choice of mobile phone operators, but do this only for operators which charge a price difference between on- and off-net calls. Coordination is strongest within groups of students who frequently interact with each other, but weaker with students from outside their group. Furthermore, the students did not coordinate their choice of mobile handsets – there rather is a tendency to choose a different handset than the one used by their friends.

• 25 Pages • 

Evolution of communities in dynamic social networks

A glare of lights falling on the screen of the phone relating to an article on Social Networks

Abstract

Real-world social networks from a variety of domains can naturally be modelled as dynamic graphs. However, approaches to detecting communities have largely focused on identifying communities in static graphs. Recently, researchers have begun to consider the problem of tracking the evolution of groups of users in dynamic scenarios. Here we describe a model for tracking the progress of communities over time in a dynamic network, where each community is characterised by a series of significant evolutionary events. This model is used to motivate a community-matching strategy for efficiently identifying and tracking dynamic communities. Evaluations on synthetic graphs containing embedded events demonstrate that this strategy can successfully track communities over time in volatile networks. In addition, we describe experiments exploring the dynamic communities detected in a real mobile operator network containing millions of users.

• 13 Pages •Â