Collapse of Online Social Networks: Structural Evaluation, Open Challenges, and Proposed Solutions
Ateeq Ur Rehman, Rizwan Tariq, Abdul Rehman, Anand Paul
Abstract
There is a rapid increase in online social networks (OSN) due to the development of information and communication technologies (ICT). People around the globe are adopting the new OSN to keep in touch with friends and family members, to remain updated with the latest trends and news, etc. In almost every OSN, few influential users are active and attract other members and make clusters. Many users connect with these influential users to remain in touch with the latest ongoing trends as the influential nodes come up with the latest news. In this work, the structural analysis of the Facebook network is undergone. The influential nodes have been identified based on betweenness centrality (BC) and degree centrality (DC) measures. Further, community detection has been made in the whole network especially around the influential nodes. Upon filtration of four top-ranked nodes selected based on the high value of BC and DC, only 22.75% nodes and 8.87% remain in the network. Hence, there is a big question about the sustainability of OSN.