Interconnectedness of Dreamwidth users

[thirdblindmouse]

(I don't know how to collect data on this, but I'm sure it can be done. I'm also not sure what metrics to use, but eh.)

I would like to see data on how interconnected Dreamwidth users are (by subscription, access, or both), especially if it could be compared to LiveJournal. I expect that Dreamwidth is more tightly interconnected than LJ, for a number of different reasons:

1. All free accounts were created by invites, and probably a large number of the now-paid accounts were too.
2. The separation of Access and Subscription has made me a lot more ready to subscribe to others, and I'm not the only one.
3. This place is very fannish. A lot of fandom came over en masse; I don't know that any other communities did, therefore there are probably not many large-yet-separate groups on the site.

Any ideas on how to collect this information? Any thoughts on the worth of the exercise?

Comments

[foxfirefey]

For getting the info, we'd probably want to wait for this patch to be applied. Once you have that, you can do a network crawl--start with one person and percolate your way out.

Also, what do you technically mean by tightly interconnected? More cliques? More connections between members of a given group? Individual users having more access/subscription connections?

I do recommend looking at the code for LJMinion, as it's a basic library designed to enable this kind of stuff. When the above patch comes in, I'll be able to make a DWMinion that does it for DW. I talk about this kind of stuff over at memewidth when I get around to it, hehe.

[foxfirefey]

Here's a library that could go on top of LJMinion's data gathering that can actually perform some social network analysis algorithms: libSNA.

[thirdblindmouse]

By tightly interconnected, I mean 'everybody knows everybody, or knows people who do'. Fewer degrees of separation between any random two individuals. *goes to check out those links*

[foxfirefey]

That would make sense, but would it just be because DW is smaller overall and LJ has a lot more people, so there's just fewer degrees of separation available period? There would have to be a way to scale the analysis somehow!

[thirdblindmouse]

Hmm, true... *puts off project until she has real time to think it through*