The role of information diffusion in the evolution of social networks

Every day millions of users are connected through online social networks, generating a rich trove of data that allows us to study the mechanisms behind human interactions. Triadic closure has been treated as the major mechanism for creating social links: if Al-ice follows Bob and Bob follows Charlie, Alice will follow Char-lie. Here we present an analysis of longitudinal micro-blogging data, revealing a more nuanced view of the strategies employed by users when expanding their social circles. While the network struc-ture affects the spread of information among users, the network is in turn shaped by this communication activity. This suggests a link creation mechanism whereby Alice is more likely to follow Charlie after seeing many messages by Charlie. We characterize users with a set of parameters associated with different link creation strategies, estimated by a Maximum-Likelihood approach. Triadi