Blog: Simulations and Mathematics Suggest That There Always Be a Facebook

Simulations and Mathematics Suggest That There Always Be a Facebook
National Center for Nuclear Research (03/02/12)

National Center for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) scientists are conducting research that could lead to the development of a field of mathematics focused on the theory of minority games. Minority games can be used to model social behavior patterns and reactions to financial markets, to optimize utilization of power distribution networks, and to analyze and manage road traffic. "Results obtained in many computer simulations done by us are not just interesting; we have also found some analytical expression to describe them," says NCBJ professor Wojciech Wislicki. Contrary to classical games, in minority games players do not know everything about the game and are reasoning inductively on the basis of their experience, a situation that more closely resembles reality. "The rules seem simple, but behavior of many agents governed by the rules exhibits very complex dynamics," notes NCBJ researcher Karol Wawrzyniak. The researchers also demonstrated how to use minority games theory to forecast winning moves by investigating the dependency of forecast accuracy on the number of participating players. They say groups in which players have transferred their individual strategies to one leader achieve the largest success.

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Blog: Twitter Bots Create Surprising New Social Connections

Twitter Bots Create Surprising New Social Connections
Technology Review (01/23/12) Mike Orcutt

A group of freelance Web researchers have created a Twitter bot, called a socialbot, that can fool users into thinking the bots are real people and serve as virtual social connector, accelerating the natural rate of human-to-human communication. The system grew out of the Web Ecology Project, an independent research group focused on studying the structure of social media phenomena. Some of the Web Ecology Project researchers, led by Tim Hwang, created their own organization, called the Pacific Social Architecting Corp., to continue the development of socialbots. In further experiments, the group tracked 2,700 Twitter users, divided into randomly assigned target groups of 300, over 54 days. The first 33 days served as a control period, during which no socialbots were deployed. Then, during the 21-day experimental period, nine bots were activated, one for each target group. On average, each bot gained 62 new followers and received 33 incoming tweets. The researchers also found that there was a 43 percent increase in human-to-human follows, after the socialbots were introduced, compared to the control period.

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Blog: Walls Have Eyes: How Researchers Are Studying You on Facebook

Walls Have Eyes: How Researchers Are Studying You on Facebook
Time (11/14/11) Sonia van Gilder Cooke

Facebook's trove of personal information is so encyclopedic that researchers are using the site's advertising tool to pinpoint their desired demographic with scientific accuracy, according to a recent Demos report. The report focused on European right-wing extremist groups, and used Facebook's data to find 500,000 fans of right-wing groups across Europe. The researchers linked these Facebook users to a survey that asked questions about their education level, attitudes toward violence, and optimism about their own future. Demos' research is just one example of how Facebook is becoming a popular tool among scientists. There are currently more than 800 million active users adding an average of three pieces of content daily, driving the number of academic papers with the Facebook's name in the title up almost 800 percent over the past five years. Researchers say Facebook's data also could be used to address social health problems. For example, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study found that undergraduates who discussed their drunken exploits on Facebook were significantly more likely to have a drinking problem than those students who did not discuss the topic online.

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Blog: Socialbots Used by Researchers to 'Steal' Facebook Data

Socialbots Used by Researchers to 'Steal' Facebook Data
BBC News (11/02/11)

University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers were able to collect 46,500 email addresses and 14,500 home addresses from Facebook by using socialbots. Socialbots are a social networking adaptation of botnets that criminals can use to send out spam. The malware takes control of a social networking profile and performs basic activities such as posting messages and sending requests. Over the course of eight weeks, the UBC team used 102 socialbots and one botmaster to attempt to make friends with 8,570 Facebook users, and 3,055 accepted the friendships. Facebook users with the most friends were more likely to accept a socialbot as a friend. The team had the socialbots send only 25 requests a day to keep from triggering Facebook's fraud detection software. "As socialbots infiltrate a targeted online social network, they can further harvest private users' data, such as email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal data that have monetary value," the researchers say.

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Blog: Social Media for Dementia Patients

Social Media for Dementia Patients
SINTEF (09/15/11)

SINTEF researchers are developing a version of the popular Facebook social media site that offers a simpler user interface designed for elderly people and those with dementia. "Why should elderly people be excluded from the social media, which are the communication platform of the future?" says SINTEF researcher Tone Oderud. The researchers want to develop a Web-based communications application that is simple and secure for elderly and senile users, their relatives, and caregivers. They say that social media can become an important tool for improving the quality of life of elderly people, while easing the burden on therapists and caregivers. In testing, the application has shown that simple contact between relatives and the support services improved all users' security. "The tests have shown us that there is great potential for all in the fields of caregiving and digital communication," Oderud says.

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Blog: Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas

Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas
RPI News (07/25/11) Gabrielle DeMarco

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers have found that just 10 percent of a population is enough to sway the majority of a society. The researchers used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point in which a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The research also found that the percent of committed opinion holders required to shift majority opinion does not change significantly with the type of network in which the opinion holders are working. The researchers developed computer models of three types of social networks. The first network had each person connect to every other person in the network, the second model had a few individuals serve as hubs, and the third model gave every person in the network about the same number of connections. After the networks were constructed, the researchers planted a few "true" believers into each of the networks. As the true believers began to interact with the others in the network, the opinion of a majority of the individuals gradually, and then very rapidly, began to shift.

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Blog: Swarms of Locusts Use Social Networking to Communicate

Swarms of Locusts Use Social Networking to Communicate
Institute of Physics (07/15/11)

The swarming behavior of locusts is created by the same social networks that humans adopt, according to a study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems and a U.S.-based scientist supported by the National Science Foundation. The researchers applied previous findings on opinion formation in social networks to an earlier study of 120 locust nymphs marching in a ring-shaped arena in the lab. Using a computer model that simulated the social network among locusts, the team found that the key component to reproducing the movements observed in the lab is the social interactions that occur when locusts, walking in one direction, convince others to follow them. Locusts create the equivalent of our human social networks, according to the researchers. "We concluded that the mechanism through which locusts agree on a direction to move together ... is the same we sometimes use to decide where to live or where to go out," says researcher Gerd Zschaler. "We let ourselves be convinced by those in our social network, often by those going in the opposite direction."

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