Measuring Relationship Strength In Online Social Networks Based On Users' Activities and Profile Information

This 2013 paper focuses on measuring relationship strength on Facebook based on user’s activities and profile information. The authors critique social network research focused on friendship networks. They argue, that since the friendship network is binary, these analyses do not effectively differentiate between close friends and further acquaintances. The research is based on the results of a Facebook application developed to collect users’ information using a questionnaire. Based on users’ answers, the authors measured their relationship strength at four levels. The exercise used outlier removal and normalization of reminder data, and results were narrowed down using Information Gain criteria. Two models of Decision Tree and multilayer perception were used to measure relationship strength, and a 10-fold Cross Validation method was applied.

This article will be of use to practitioners, researchers and scholars interested in measuring relationship strength on Facebook.   

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