Analysis of a Dutch Social Network: Hyves

An interesting article in PLos One on an online networking service that is very popular in The Netherlands. It has a relatively large proportion of the population as members. The author used a dataset obtained from this Dutch service: Hyves.

Some interesting results from this extensive data analyses.

• Young people roughly between 10 and 25 years of age are overrepresented as a share of the population, more demographic facts can be found in the free accessible article published in PLos One
• The structure of the Hyves network follows the regularities found in other large complex networks. This can be summarized as two different kind of distributions. Core densities with the ability to a quick spreading through the whole network. In other words, small network nodes of separate small worlds in which sometimes news spreads very rapid through the whole network. The same principle as in the epidemiological literature, a core-periphery structure that is believed to facilitate the spread of diseases
• A substantial fraction have no Friends at all. Those with friends have on average 106 friends

The short conclusion is that a comparison with other online social networks such as facebook shows that these networks show remarkable similarities.