Social Media
Social Media is a massive source of Big Data today. The data is generated through user interactions or by just let other users know what one user is thinking about. The main information source of a social media user are friends, followers, or indicated interests that offer information. This includes information from users with similar interests. There is a social influence when a user behaves in a similar way to other users. The recommendation of users with similar topic interests usually improves the experience of another user. This is the case because acquiring information about topic interests becomes then easier. When a user posts information on social media its content can reflect similar topic interests. This means the value of social influence is higher when users have more similar interests. This fact is a key property of online social media networks and data being generated by their applications worldwide (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
Users influence other users
There are even studies that calculate users social influences in order to find very influential users. The evaluation of a user’s social influence can be done with certain factors in an evaluation model. This is not easy since social influence of users is very time dependent. The model needs to discover the interested topics of a user over a certain period of time. Also with the diversity of users the user’s social influence in social media is quite variable. In order to effectively evaluate the influence as many users as possible need to be distinguished. A proper model is able to identify the seed user with high influence spread.
More Information about Social Media
We recommend to have a look at the following short video in order to understand the impact of social media in our lives:
