[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-139953-105":59,"doc-detail-139953-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","toward-understanding-friendship-in-online-social-networks-paper","Toward Understanding Friendship in Online Social Networks - Paper","","Online social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Orkut are organized around the notion of friendship, even when users may accumulate large numbers of “friends.” The study examines how online (virtual) relationships relate to offline (real) friendship using sociological data, highlighting a meaningful conceptual difference and incomplete overlap between the two. It analyzes the structural properties of online friendship, reporting that it follows the Pareto (double Pareto) distribution with age stratification, while not showing gender segregation, and introduces a digital personality measure to quantify engagement in virtual friendships.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/toward-understanding-friendship-in-online-social-networks-paper/139953/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/toward-understanding-friendship-in-online-social-networks-paper/139953.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Fahsai","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-19","2026-08-24",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":39},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How does the paper compare online friendship with offline friendship?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The paper argues there is a significant conceptual difference between virtual and real friendships. It also presents data showing that overlap between offline friends and online “friends” exists but is not overwhelming.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What distribution does the structure of online friendship follow?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The paper observes that online friendship structure follows the Pareto (or double Pareto) distribution.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What demographic factors are found to influence online friendship structure?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The study reports age stratification effects in online friendship. It does not find evidence of gender segregation.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},139953,1787565256,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":39,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":19,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":52},549768702563,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/8000c4aa63b76e948b?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1786536092046926083","Toward Understanding Friendship in Online Social  \nNetworks  \nDmitry Zinoviev  \nMathematics and Computer Science Department Suffolk University Boston, Massachusetts 02421, USA  \n[dmitry@mcs.suffolk.edu](dmitry@mcs.suffolk.edu)  \nVy Duong  \nMathematics and Computer Science Department Suffolk University Boston, Massachusetts 02421, USA  \nduo1 [1801@suffolk.edu](1801@suffolk.edu)  \narXiv : 0902 .4658v1 [ cs .CY] 26 Feb 2009  \nABSTRACT  \nAll major on-line social networks, such as MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Orkut, are built around the concept of friendship. It is not uncommon for a social network participant to have over 100 friends. A natural question arises: are they all real friends of hers, or does she mean something di􀀋erent when she calls them “friends?” Speaking in other words, what is the relationship between o􀀋-line (real, traditional) friendship and its on-line (virtual) namesake? In this paper, we use sociological data to suggest that there is a signi􀀌cant di􀀋erence between the concepts of virtual and real friendships. We further investigate the structure of on-line friendship and observe that it follows the Pareto (or double Pareto) distribution and is subject to age strati􀀌cation but not to gender segregation. We introduce the concept of digital personality that quanti􀀌es the willingness of a social network participant to engage in virtual friendships.  \nKeywords: Online Social Network, Friend, Overlay, Demographics.  \n1. INTRODUCTION  \nMassive online social networks (MOSN) have become increasingly popular in the last several years. The largest online social networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace, have tens and hundreds of millions of member accounts (some of which, however, can be dormant) . Direct descendents of the Internet forums and chatrooms of the 1980s and 1990s, they serve as venues for communication, socialization, cooperation, learning, electronic commerce, and even cybercrime.  \nAll modern MOSNs have similar internal structure. Each MOSN can be represented as a mesh of interconnected nodes, where every node represents a member account, and the connections between the nodes represent relationships between the members. A member account typically represents one human user, but it is not uncommon for a single user to create multiple online personalities (e.g., for the purpose of separating business and leasure) or for a group of users (say, working together on a project or representing a closely con  \nICTKS ’08 Huntsville, AL  \nAccepted to the International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society, 2009 .  \nnected social group) to create a single member account. For the rest of the paper we assume that each member account corresponds to one human user.  \nA connection between two MOSN members is typically established if and when the two believe to share something in common, such as a common background, common friends, common interests and activities—or are interested in exploring friends, interests, and activities of others. A connection can be implicit—through online communities (member groups by interests and causes [12, 13])—or explicit. Explicitly, a MOSN member can have one or more so-called“friends’ lists,” to which the connections are added according to certain rules. It is mainly through the online (“virtual”) friendship that the communications between the network members occur (which does not exclude the possibility of peer-to-peer communications between the members who are not formally virtual “friends”) .  \nIn this paper, we will show that there is a signi􀀌cant difference between the concepts of virtual and real friendships. We will present quantitative data from a real MOSN that demonstrate that not all “friends” on the Internet are real friends and that the overlap between the circles of o􀀏ine friends and online friends exists but is not overwhelming. We will analyse the demographics of the online friendship.  \nIn addition, we introduce the concept of quantitative personalit","cbCaiaEerQk0CDId","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiaEerQk0CDId","pdf",168505,"English","# Introduction\n## Related work\n# Digital personality and quantitative analysis","[{\"question\":\"How does the paper compare online friendship with offline friendship?\",\"answer\":\"The paper argues there is a significant conceptual difference between virtual and real friendships. It also presents data showing that overlap between offline friends and online “friends” exists but is not overwhelming.\"},{\"question\":\"What distribution does the structure of online friendship follow?\",\"answer\":\"The paper observes that online friendship structure follows the Pareto (or double Pareto) distribution.\"},{\"question\":\"What demographic factors are found to influence online friendship structure?\",\"answer\":\"The study reports age stratification effects in online friendship. It does not find evidence of gender segregation.\"}]","Toward Understanding Friendship in Online Social Networks - Paper | PDF"]