Patterns in Interactive Tagging Networks

Abstract

How do users behave if they can tag each other in social networks?In this paper, we answer this question by studying the interactive tagging network constructed by Twitter lists. Twitter lists can be regarded as the tagging process; a user (i.e., tagger) creates a list with a name (i.e., tag) and adds other users (i.e., tagged users) into the list. This tagging network is by nature different from the resource tagging networks (e.g., Flickr and Delicious) because users on this network can tag each other. We address the following research questions: (RQ1) What is the common patterns and the difference between the interactive tagging network and the resource tagging networks? (RQ2) Do users tag each other on the interactive tagging network? And if so, to what extent? (RQ3) What is the difference between the two types of relationships on Twitter: who-tags-whom and who-follows-whom? By quantitatively studying million-scale networks, we found the pervasive patterns across the different tagging networks, and the interactive patterns within the interactive tagging network. This study sheds light on the underlying characteristics of the interactive tagging network, which is relevant to the social scientists and the system designers of the tagging systems.