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International Conference on E-Technologies

MCETECH 2011: E-Technologies: Transformation in a Connected World pp 227–240Cite as

Towards Detecting Influential Users in Social Networks

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 78))

Abstract

One of online social networks’ best marketing strategies is viral advertisement. The influence of users on their friends can increase or decrease sales, so businesses are interested in finding influential people and encouraging them to create positive influence. Models and techniques have been proposed to facilitate finding influential people, however most fail to address common online social network problems such as fake friends, spammers and inactive users. We propose a method that uses interaction between social network users to detect the most influential among them. We calculate the relationship strength and influence by capturing the frequency of interactions between users. We tested our model in a simulated social network of 150 users. Results show that our model succeeds in excluding spammers and inactive users from the calculation and in handling fake friendships.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ottawa, 55 Laurier Ave. East, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1N 6N5

    Amir Afrasiabi Rad & Morad Benyoucef

Authors
  1. Amir Afrasiabi Rad
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  2. Morad Benyoucef
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technologies de l’Information, HEC Montréal, 3000, ch. de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, H3T 2A7, Montréal, Québec, Canada

    Gilbert Babin

  2. Academy of Journalism and Media, University of Neuchâtel, rue Emile-Argand 11, CH-2000, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Katarina Stanoevska-Slabeva

  3. Institute of Computer Science, University of Neuchâtel, rue Emile-Argand 11, CH-2000, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Peter Kropf

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Afrasiabi Rad, A., Benyoucef, M. (2011). Towards Detecting Influential Users in Social Networks. In: Babin, G., Stanoevska-Slabeva, K., Kropf, P. (eds) E-Technologies: Transformation in a Connected World. MCETECH 2011. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 78. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20862-1_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20862-1_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-20861-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-20862-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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