Before Google’s Social Graph API closed last month, I was able to gain access to a reasonable subset: 7,100,000 relationships across 1,500,000 sites (shown below). To be honest, it wasn’t what I was expecting.
The attach rate $latex \left(P\left(k\right) \sim{} k^{-\gamma}\right)$ is pretty close to what Barabasi, Albert, and Jeong found in Scale-free characteristics of random networks. $latex \gamma \sim{} 2.11$ across all, with $latex R^2 = 0.86$. $latex \gamma \sim{} 2.73$ for nodes with fewer than 101 attachments; $latex R^2 = 0.97$.
Even though that was not much different, what clearly stood out was the sizable amount of neighborhoods. Continue reading “Anything But Random: 1,500,000 Blogs”