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An Experimental Study of Search in Global Social Networks
Peter Sheridan Dodds,1Roby Muhamad,2Duncan J. Watts1,2*
We report on a global social-search experiment in which morethan 60,000 e-mail users attempted to reach one of 18 targetpersons in 13 countries by forwarding messages to acquaintances.We find that successful social search is conducted primarilythrough intermediate to weak strength ties, does not requirehighly connected "hubs" to succeed, and, in contrast to unsuccessfulsocial search, disproportionately relies on professional relationships.By accounting for the attrition of message chains, we estimatethat social searches can reach their targets in a median offive to seven steps, depending on the separation of source andtarget, although small variations in chain lengths and participationrates generate large differences in target reachability. Weconclude that although global social networks are, in principle,searchable, actual success depends sensitively on individualincentives.
1 Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University, 420 West 118th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA. 2 Department of Sociology, Columbia University, 1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: djw24{at}columbia.edu
Structure and tie strengths in mobile communication networks.
J.-P. Onnela, J. Saramaki, J. Hyvonen, G. Szabo, D. Lazer, K. Kaski, J. Kertesz, and A.-L. Barabasi (2007)
PNAS
104, 7332-7336
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