Evaluation of Social Networks

The rising scale and intensity of social network use (the social network notion will hereafter be interchangeable with and abbreviated to the “net”), fueled by advertising companies, has highlighted the need for evaluating the net via its potential to influence and leverage the activity of net actors. The entities playing key roles in the nets are: owners, members, advertisement companies, producers, and consumers. Each of these entities has its own interests, which tend to be contradictory to or synergic with those of others. These interests can be summarized as the following types of interactions: - The owners strive to maximize profitability and cash generation by increasing the number of their members and by increasing the net’s member usage, inter alia, by promoting the net’s total time consumption, and thus enlarging the advertising impact. - The members strive to increase the circulation of their ideas among the net’s membership in the most user friendly and attractive manner: to minimize expenses (such as membership fees) and to reduce the likelihood of causing damage and disrupting privacy. - The advertisement companies supply material to be exposed to their members – for internalizing their idea consciously or subconsciously among the maximal number of suitable members. - The producers generally have long-range plans to sell their product to the maximal number of consumers with the minimal expenses. The advertisement companies are generally the “long arm” of the producers. - The consumers are generally interested in being exposed to innovations related to their fields of interest; however, they prefer not to be bothered by irrelevant advertisements (spam) and they refuse to pay directly for any advertisements (free riders). The members’ set is a subset of the consumers. The aim of the paper is to comprehensively analyze the notions presented above and to recommend the optimal approach for the presented issue for each of the above entities, considering various behaviors, some of which are mentioned below: - The message inserted in the advertisement is distributed to the members’ community in several iterations to potential consumers. - Generally, the members will agree to forego protected privacy for the free net. - The advertisement should be varied to catch the members' attention several times using the same message. There are three suggested main modes of challenging the net’s analysis in the above context: - Data Scope is an old method in which the data flow in the net is collected and analyzed online in real time. - The net’s specifications or parameters, such as the number of members, the average data flow frequency, and the average number of connections for each member's interactions, is formulated. - The simulation is useful for analyzing the net by predicting the additional net development and its steady-state rate. This article may enable a more accurate estimation of the net’s value by regulating and stabilizing the net's behavior and by avoiding unexpected downtime.