The Link Prediction Problem For Social Networks

Abstract

Given a snapshot of a social network, can we infer which new interactions among its members are likely to occur in the near future? We formalize this question as the <i>link prediction problem</i>, and develop approaches to link prediction based on measures the "proximity" of nodes in a network. Experiments on large co-authorship networks suggest that information about future interactions can be extracted from network topology alone, and that fairly subtle measures for detecting node proximity can outperform more direct measures.