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SUMMARY:Online Social Networks and Applications: a Measurement Perspective
  - Ben Zhao (UCSB)
DTSTART:20090529T100000Z
DTEND:20090529T110000Z
UID:TALK17983@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Eiko Yoneki
DESCRIPTION:With more than half a billion users worldwide\, online social 
 networks such as Facebook are popular platforms for interaction\, communic
 ation and collaboration between friends. Researchers have recently propose
 d an emerging class of Internet applications that integrate relationships 
 from social networks to improve security and performance. But can these ap
 plications be effective in real life? And if so\, how can we predict their
  effectiveness when they are deployed on real social networks?\n\nIn this 
 talk\, we will describe recent research that tries to answer these questio
 ns using measurement-based studies of online social networks and applicati
 ons.  Using  measurements of a socially-enhanced web auction site\, we sho
 w how social networks can actually reduce fraud in online transactions.  W
 e then discuss the evaluation of social network applications\, and argue t
 hat existing methods using social graphs can produce to misleading results
 .  We use results from a large-scale study of the Facebook network to show
  that social graphs are insufficient models of user activity\, and propose
  the use of "interaction graphs" as a more accurate model.  We construct i
 nteraction graphs from our Facebook datasets\, and use both types of graph
 s to validate two well-known social-based applications (Reliable Email and
  SybilGuard). Our results reveal new insights into both systems and confir
 m our hypothesis that choosing the right graph model significantly impacts
  predictions of application performance.\n\nBio: Ben Zhao is a faculty mem
 ber at the Computer Science department\, U.C. Santa Barbara. Before UCSB\,
  he completed his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science at U.C. Berke
 ley\, and his B.S. from Yale University. His research interests include ne
 tworking\, security and privacy and distributed systems. \nHe is a recipie
 nt of the National Science Foundation's CAREER award\, MIT Tech Review's T
 R-35 Award (Young Innovators Under 35)\, and is one of ComputerWorld's Top
  40 Technology Innovators.
LOCATION:FW26\, Computer Laboratory\, William Gates Builiding
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