Topology-based recommendation of users in micro-blogging communities

Abstract

Nowadays, more and more users share real-time news and information in micro-blogging communities such as Twitter, Tumblr or Plurk. In these sites, information is shared via a followers/followees social network structure in which a follower will receive all the micro-blogs from the users he follows, named followees. With the increasing number of registered users in this kind of sites, finding relevant and reliable sources of information becomes essential. The reduced number of characters present in micro-posts along with the informal language commonly used in these sites make it difficult to apply standard content-based approaches to the problem of user recommendation. To address this problem, we propose an algorithm for recommending relevant users that explores the topology of the network considering different factors that allow us to identify users that can be considered good information sources. Experimental evaluation conducted with a group of users is reported, demonstrating the potential of the approach.