A social network evolution model based on seniority

Abstract

A social network is a representation that describes the relationships between individuals. In recent years, several interesting phenomena, such as the densification power law, have been observed in social networks and a number of models have been proposed to explain them. In this paper, we investigate an interesting phenomenon called the seniority difference distribution of new connections, which we observed in our data. The distribution reveals that there exists a seniority preference when a new network node tries to establish connections with existing nodes. To explain the phenomenon, we propose several models based on different local selection policies, namely, equal-probability selection, freshness-based selection, oldness-based selection, and combined freshness/oldness selection. The results of simulations show that, by combining the concepts of freshness and oldness, it is possible to reproduce a social network that matches the observation.