Social Network Analysis of an Online Dating Network Lin Chen Richi Nayak Computer Science Discipline Computer Science Discipline Queensland University of Technology Queensland University of Technology [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT embarrassment when asking personal questions. Time has Online social networks can be found everywhere from witnessed the great increase in demand of the online dating chatting websites like MSN, blogs such as MySpace to industry. It is reported that the online dating industry has social media such as YouTube and second life. Among gone from zero about 10 years ago to about Aus $90 them, there is one interesting type of online social million dollars in 2008 and about $100 million dollars in networks, online dating network that is growing fast. This 2010[3]. The US online dating market is expected to grow paper analyzes an online dating network from social to US $932 million dollars in 2011 [3]. network analysis point of view. Observations are made and This paper looks at the structure of an online dating results are obtained in order to suggest a better network through Bow-Tie Analysis, Indegree & Outdegree, recommendation system for people-to-people networks. reachability analysis and attribute breakage. A popular Keywords Australian dating service was chosen for this study because Online Dating Network, Social Network Analysis, User of its rich data with a one year snapshot extracted. The profile, User preference results from this study will aid in building a better recommendation system for online dating networks. INTRODUCTION Social networking sites have skyrocketed in popularity with LITERATURE REVIEW millions of users using social networking websites every Social Network Analysis (SNA) is the study of social day. Most commonly, online social networks serve as a entities (people in organisation) and their interactions and virtual community where users make friends, keep in touch relationships [21]. The purpose of SNA is to understand the with old friends, share pictures and inform the world of structure, behaviour and composition of social networks major and minuscule life events. Facebook and thus improve the social network and social relations (www.facebook.com) and Twitter (http://twitter.com) are contained within. SNA has been applied in many situations good examples of online social networking. Online social from product marketing to search engines and networks are referred to as any online community where organizational dynamics [6] [19]. SNA has been used to users interact with one another and form relations [15]. A discover how a rumor spreads and what social structures knowledge sharing website such as Wikipedia exist among people [21]. By analysing a company’s email, (www.wikipedia.com) can also be considered as a online SNA helps the manager to find the hidden leader who may social network where users interact through editing articles not necessarily have a high official position, or much or it could be message sharing website like MySpace where responsibility, but plays an important role in the company relations are formed through sharing personal blogs, music, [19] [5] [14] [9]. In the same context, studies have analysed and videos. “who knows what knowledge”, “who think who knows who” and “who believes in what” [17]. The Google search Among all of online social networking sites, there is an engine provides a classic example of social network interesting and demanding but not well studied site; online analysis. The famous PageRank algorithm is based on the dating websites. Online dating websites are a type of social concept that the linked pages have relevant relationships to networking because users are related through various a certain extent [16]. communication paths; including sending messages, emails or chat. Online dating services offer various advantages; The characteristics and features of an online social network such as enormous amount of choice for a user, no limitation can be observed when the graph structure of a social from the physical distance, secure channel, less network is modeled and analyzed. An in-depth understanding of the graph structure of online social networks is necessary in order to evaluate the current online social networks and to understand the impact online Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). social networks have on the Internet [15]. The application C&T’11, 29 June – 2 July 2011, QUT, Brisbane, Australia. of graph structure theory to online dating network might ACM 978-1-4503-0824-3 result in the detecting of the flaws of the existing methods 41 and help propose suitable methods for online dating groups: female and male. The data analysis shows that 97% network; like how the study of the Web led to the discovery of members in this network are looking for a straight of algorithms for finding the sources of authority in the relationship, therefore, any other types of relationships are Web. The graph structure theory is able to identify the not considered in this paper. It is assumed that direct links power law, small-world networks and scale-free networks inside a group do not exist. Figure 1 shows an example of in online social networks [15] [13] [1] and can help show this bipartite graph with a male group and a female group. the users’ distribution in online dating network. Graph The links between two groups are messages which are structure theory is also able to highlight SCC (Strongly directed. The link shows the existence of a relationship Connected Component) and WCC (Weakly Connected between two members essentially showing the user interest. Component) which gives an insight on how well the users As shown in Figure 1, a male user um1 sends a message to a in a social network are connected and how easy it is for a female user uf4 indicating the male user is interested in the user to find ideal partner. female user. But the female user uf4 does not reply. So their The relevant papers on online dating topic mainly come relation is not established in this case. A user can choose to from psychology such as what contributes to successful send many messages like um3. A user can choose not to marriage [12], assessing attractiveness in online dating send a message and rather wait for a message being sent to profile [7] and many others. Another source is him or her; uf2 is such an example. recommendation systems. Traditional recommendation algorithms, including user-user algorithms and item-item algorithms are proposed for online dating recommendation by [4]. Kazienko [10] claims that not only users’ interests and demographic data need to be considered, but also their activities and some measures of relationships with other users should be considered. So far, however, no research has been done to study the online dating network from the SNA point of view. AN ONLINE DATING NETWORK Online dating networks are places where people upload their personal information and preferred partner Figure1. Bipartite Graph. information and allow them communicate with each other on the Internet in order to facilitate the user developing a personal romantic relationship. The SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS METHODs Data required by a dating network for recommending There are three important concepts in social network potential partners can be divided into the following analysis: actors, relations, and ties. Actors refer to people features: (1) Personal profile for each user which includes or organizations [21]. Relations are characterized by self details on demographic, fixed-choice responses on content, direction, and strength [8]. A tie connects a pair of Physical, Identity, Lifestyle, Career and Education, Politics actors by one or more relations. and Religion and other attributes, free-text responses to An actor in the online dating network refers to the user various interests such as sport, music etc, and optionally, who logs into the network as a user and view profiles, one or more photographs; (2) Ideal partner profile for each send/receive messages and emails. Actors can be described user which includes information about what user prefers in by the static profile that they create in the beginning of Ideal partner, usually the multiple choices on the attributes their registration and update over the period of discussed before; (3) User activities on the network such membership. The static profile is defined by (1) users as viewing the profiles of other members, sending pre- interest, that includes structured information such as typed messages to other users; sending emails or chat Personality, Smoking Habits, Dietary Habits, Have Pets, invitations; and (4) Measure of relationships with other Political Persuasion, etc and and free text information such users such as willingness to initialize relationships and as Headline, About Me, Music, Reading, Movie, Sports, responding to invitations, and frequency and intensity with etc, (2) demographic information in structured format, and which all relationships are maintained. A relationship can (3) users matching preferences that includes structured text be called successful for the purpose of match making when information such as Have Pets, Relationship Status, Have a user initiates a pre-typed message as a token of interest Children, Hair Color, etc and free text information such as and the target user sends back a positive message reply. Ideal Partner Description. Message is called positive if the user replies in positive The content of relation in the network is the exchange of manner, and vice versa for a negative reply. information by sending and/or receiving messages and/or The users’ online dating activities can be represented as emails. The direction of relation in the network can be bi- bipartite graph. Bipartite graph have two distinguishable 42 direction, because, the studied portal allows a user to both network users are involved in all kind of information send and receive the message/email from another user.