TITLE:
An Estimation Method for Relationship Strength in Weighted Social Network Graphs
AUTHORS:
Xiang XLin, Tao Shang, Jianwei Liu
KEYWORDS:
Social Networks; Relationship Strength; Estimation
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Computer and Communications,
Vol.2 No.4,
March
18,
2014
ABSTRACT: Previous works mainly focused on estimating
direct relationship strength in social networks. If two users are not directly
connected in a social network, there is no direct relationship. In order to
estimate the relationship strength between two indirectly connected users as
well as directly connected users, this paper proposes an estimation method for
relationship strength in weighted social network graphs, which is based on the
trust propagation strategy and the estimation of direct relationship strength.
Our method considers the length of a relationship path, the number of
relationship paths and the edge weights (direct relationship strength) along
with a relationship path to estimate the strength of indirect relationship.
Then it synthesizes the direct and indirect relationship strength to represent
the strength of relationship between two users in social net- works. Thus our
method can fully estimate the relationship strength between any two users in a
social network no matter whether they are directly connected or not.