Using social network analysis of human aspects for online social network software: a design methodology

Introduction Online social networks, also known as Social Network Sites (SNS) are web-based services allowing users to communicate with each other whether for personal or professional usage. Boyd and Ellison have defined SNS in their paper as “Web Based Services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system (2) to articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the systems” (Ellison 2007). These social network sites not only allow individuals to meet strangers, but also provide them the opportunity to regularly interact with their connections living across the world. Abstract Background: Online social networks share similar topological characteristics as realworld social networks. Many studies have been conducted to analyze the online social networks, but it is difficult to link human interests with social network software design. Purpose: The goal of this work is to propose a methodology involving the analysis of human interactions for use in designing online social network software. Methods: We propose a novel use of social network analysis techniques to elicit requirements in order to design better online Social network-based software. The validation case study involved the collection of real-world data by means of a questionnaire to perform a network design construction and analysis. The key idea is to examine social network to help in the identification of behaviors and interests of people for better software requirements elicitation. Results: The validation case study demonstrates how unexpected centrality measures can emerge in real world networks. Our case study can thus conducted as a baseline for better requirement elicitation studies for online social network software design. This work also indicates how sociometric methods may be used to analyze any social domain as a possible standard practice in online social network software design. Overall, the study proved the effectiveness of the proposed novel methodology for the design of online social network software. The methodology specifically improves upon traditional methods for software design by involving social network modeling and analysis to first study the behavior and elicit requirements to develop more resilient online social network sites.