Bistability in online social networks

Online social networking is an increasingly prominent social phenomenon that has motivated much interesting research in networking. This work studies the dynamic evolvement of online social networks by a simple stochastic model that captures the inter-dependent social interactions. We show that multiple stable states exist in the evolvement of online social networks, leading to fundamental ramifications to the structures of online social networks and their applications. ©2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 2010 INFOCOM IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops, San Diego, CA., 15-19 March 2010. In Proceedings of the IEEE INFOCOM Conference, 2010, p. 1-