Categoria: conferences

Multi-Layer Networks: data available

We have made the data of our latest work on multi-layer networks available in the Data section. The zip file contains two networks in cvs format, one between twitter users and the other between friendfeed users, and a file with account correspondences indicating pairs of accounts in twitter and friendfeed belonging to the same person. We will add new networks in a while so stay tuned!
And since we’re having a great time in Kaohsiung we are very happy to publish a picture of us with the great staff of the conference.

The ML-model for multi-layer social networks


In few weeks we’re going to Kaohsiung, Taiwan to present at the International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2011). We’re really excited about this conference (last year was great!) and we want to share the paper we’re presenting. It’s been a while since we’ve started working on the ML model (multi-layer model) as a better way to describe and measure our contemporary SNSs experience. With the variety and different strengths of different social networking online services we are using today, it is becoming increasingly common to have different online networks supporting different functions. For instance, facebook can be used to interact with friends and family, Twitter can be used to broadcast to the world and LinkedIn can be used with colleagues and business partners. Given this scenario the traditional SNA approach catches only one small part of the complex system of interconnected networks we’re part of. The ML model proposes a way to keep several networks together while performing SNA analysis.
The model is just a first step but we hope, as one of the reviewers said, “to have scratched the tip of a potentially big iceberg”.
Read the paper [PDF]

Conversation retrieval from Social Media

Next week Matteo is going to Dublin for the annual European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR). We are presenting a demo of our Conversation retrieval system for Social Media and Social Network Sites. While the addition of Social aspect to traditional online searches has been around for some times we are following a different approach. So far social search used what we can define as an ego-centric approach that means that informational objects around the web get somehow recommended by your online contacts.
We are doing something different. We are moving from online search aimed at retrieving information toward what we call a conversational search. This means that the object of our search is no longer a single information but a set of messages and users that can be described (and ranked) according to many social aspects.
Therefore some of the ranking criteria that can be used are:
Text relevance, User centrality (e.g., degree, page rank, audience), Message popularity (e.g., retweets, likes, sharing), Timeliness (i.e., distance from a given timestamp), Length (i.e., number of messages), Density (i.e., emotions and interest).
We’ve done some blind comparison between our system (tuned with different ranking parameters) and Google on some Friendfeed conversations searches. Users were asked to judge (according to their personal interest) a set of Friendfeed conversations about a specific topic. Here you can see the results (Google is green, The other two are our system with the ranking based on popularity [purple] and density [blue]), higher values mean higher a better judgement on results showed by the search system.

IR11: Sustainability, Participation, Action

Last week I’ve been at the IR11 Conference (the annual conference of the association of Internet researchers) where I presented the SIGSNA research on the propagation of information in Friendfeed – starting from the analysis of the death of Mike Bongiorno – [see slides below].
IR11 was a great experience and aoir is probably one of the best academic group around within the area of internet studies. The overall quality of the conference was really high (special thanks to Torill – the program chair – for her great work ) and I had a chance to meet many great people doing incredible researches.
Among those I really would like to point out the Mapping Online Publics (at the Queensland University of Technology) and the Retro-V project (at the University of Washington). Check out what these guys are doing!

Information propagation in Microblogging Sites

View more presentations from Luca Rossi.

SIGSNA goes HPC

We’ve been recently awarded of High Performance Computer resources by the CINECA – the Italian Consortium for high performance computing. We submitted an application a C class project (test and development) and now we we can use up to 20.000 CPU hours of the CINECA SP6 System.
This open a brand new scenario in our research with many interesting perspectives. The size of the network we are working with can be hardly managed with normal personal computers and even when it is possible it takes hours or even days of computation. Now we could move toward a new set of possibilities that so far have been out of our computational power. This could also move somehow the focus of our research adding some specific aspects of high performance computing and network theory.We’ve been recently awarded of High Performance Computer resources by the CINECA – the Italian Consortium for high performance computing. We submitted an application a C class project (test and development) and now we we can use up to 20.000 CPU hours of the CINECA SP6 System.
This open a brand new scenario in our research with many interesting perspectives. The size of the network we are working with can be hardly managed with normal personal computers and even when it is possible it takes hours or even days of computation. Now we could move toward a new set of possibilities that so far have been out of our computational power. This could also move somehow the focus of our research adding some specific aspects of high performance computing and network theory.

Keynote @WorkingCapital

A quick update just to say that we are going to give the 14.30 Keynote during the WorkingCapital Event that Telecom Italian is organizing in Bologna on June 9th. Working Capital are a series of events aimed at searching for new research and business idea. We attended the Working Capital event in Florence last year and now, less than one year after that, we are giving the keynote! Wow!

Back at work

SBP10 Conference After SBP10 Conference (the pic is there to prove that we’ve been really there) we are back at work. SPB10 has been an exiting and interesting experience for many reason. First the conference was very well organized, many interesting presentation, good time management, good food and an extraordinary cross fertilization session at the end of the conference. We’ve got a good idea of where the research on many relevant topics is going and we’ve met many interesting people. We’ve got the opportunity (thanks again for the fruitful cross-fertilization session!) to get in touch with many interesting researchers and now we just have to see if anything will came out of that.