Identifying influential persons in a social network
First Claim
1. A method for identifying a set of influential persons in a social network, comprising:
- using a general-purpose computing device to perform the following;
ranking a list of users in the social network based on a number of friends they have on the social network;
selecting as a first-ranked user a user having a largest number of friends;
designating the first-ranked user as an influencer to include in the set of influential persons before deleting any users from the list of users in the social network;
deleting the first-ranked user and friends of the first-ranked user from the list of users in the social network;
determining that a ranked user has been deleted because that ranked user is a friend of the first-ranked user;
designating a next remaining highest ranked user as the next first-ranked user;
designating the next first-ranked user as an influencer to include in the set of influential persons before deleting any users from the list of users in the social network; and
repeating the above process for subsequent-ranked users to generate the set of influential persons.
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Abstract
An influential persons identification system and method for identifying a set of influential persons (or influencers) in a social network (such as an online social network). The influential persons set is generated such that by sending a message to the set the message will be propagated through the network at the greatest speed and coverage. A ranking of users is generated, and a pruning process is performed starting with the top-ranked user and working down the list. For each user on the list, the user is identified as an influencer and then the user and each of his friends are deleted from the social network users list. Next, the same process is performed for the second-ranked user, the third-ranked user, and so forth. The process terminates when the list of users of the social network is exhausted or the desired number of influencers on the influential person set is reached.
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Citations
17 Claims
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1. A method for identifying a set of influential persons in a social network, comprising:
using a general-purpose computing device to perform the following; ranking a list of users in the social network based on a number of friends they have on the social network; selecting as a first-ranked user a user having a largest number of friends; designating the first-ranked user as an influencer to include in the set of influential persons before deleting any users from the list of users in the social network; deleting the first-ranked user and friends of the first-ranked user from the list of users in the social network; determining that a ranked user has been deleted because that ranked user is a friend of the first-ranked user; designating a next remaining highest ranked user as the next first-ranked user; designating the next first-ranked user as an influencer to include in the set of influential persons before deleting any users from the list of users in the social network; and repeating the above process for subsequent-ranked users to generate the set of influential persons. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions for generating a set of influential persons in a social network, comprising:
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ranking a list of users in the social network based on a number of friends that each user has on the social network to generate a ranking list, such that a first user from the ranking list having a greater number of friends has a higher ranking and a second user from the ranking list having a fewer number of friends than the first user has a lower ranking that the first user; selecting a user from the ranking list having the highest ranking before deleting any users from the list of users in the social network; deleting the user having the highest ranking from the list of users in the social network; deleting friends of the user having the highest ranking from the list of users in the social network; adding the user having the highest ranking to the set of influential persons; determining that a ranked user has been deleted because that ranked user is a friend of the user haying the highest ranking; designating a next remaining highest ranked user as the next user having the highest ranking; designating the next user having the highest-ranking as an influencer to include in the set of influential persons before deleting any users from the list of users in the social network; and repeating the above process for each subsequently-ranked user in the ranking list to generate the set of influential persons. - View Dependent Claims (13)
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14. A computer-implemented process for identifying and visualizing a set of influential persons in an online social network, comprising:
using the computer to perform the following; ranking a list of users in the online social network based on a criteria to generate a ranking list; designating a first-ranked user as an influencer to include in the set of influential persons before deleting any users from the list of users in the social network, the influencer defined as having a high network value such that the influencer has the capability to spread a marketing message to a greatest number of people in the online social network in the shortest amount of time as compared to others in the online social network; generating the set of influential persons by deleting each user in the ranking list and the user'"'"'s friends from the list of users in the online social network, beginning with a highest-ranked user on the ranking list and continuing in descending order until the set of influential persons is filled; determining that a ranked user has been deleted because that ranked user is a friend of the highest-ranked user; designating a next remaining highest ranked user as the next highest-ranked user; designating the next highest-ranked user as an influencer to include in the set of influential persons before deleting any users from the list of users in the social network; and displaying at least some persons in the set of influential persons to a viewer using a two-dimensional node-link graph that displays a desired person in the set of influential persons in a center of the node-link graph with lines connecting the desired person to other users in the social network of the desired person. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17)
Specification