Tie Strength and Ego Network Structure in Facebook

This chapter presents a series of analyses that investigate the properties of tie strength and ego networks in Facebook. Specifically, we provide models to estimate tie strength through communication data in Facebook, and then study the properties of ego networks defined by the estimated tie strength. The first analysis provides a characterisation of tie strength in Facebook on a small but very detailed dataset, and presents models for the prediction of tie strength using Facebook interaction variables. This is useful for understanding how social relationships and ego networks can be described by measuring online interactions. Then, we present a study on the structural properties of ego networks in Facebook on two large-scale datasets. This is aimed at finding whether a hierarchical structure similar to the one found in offline ego networks also exists in Facebook ego networks.