Using incentives to analyze social web services’ behaviors

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. This paper discusses how incentives allow social networks to attract more members and reward those that are honest by retaining them. These members referred to as social Web services process users’ requests in return for a certain usage fee and also expose certain behaviors in return of the incentives they receive. The usage fee is linked to a performance level that the social Web service needs to maintain at run time. In the case of any discrepancy between the usage fee and performance level the social Web service is expected to compensate users. However the compensation might not always take place. Simulation results illustrate why honesty is rewarding for social Web services, which has a positive impact on both their performance and the performance of the networks to which they belong