Inferring Trust Relationships in Web-based Social Networks

The growth of web-based social networking and the properties of those networks have created great potential for producing intelligent software that integrates a user's social network and preferences. Our research looks particularly at assigning trust in web-based social nets and investigates how trust information can be mined and integrated into applications. This paper introduces a definition of trust suitable for use in web-based social networks with a discussion of the properties that will influence its use in computation. We then present two algorithms for inferring trust relationships between individuals that are not directly connected in the network. Both algorithms are shown theoretically and through simulation to produce calculated trust values that are highly accurate.. We then present TrustMail, a prototype email client that uses variations on these algorithms to score email messages in the user's inbox based on the user's participation and ratings in a trust network.