Unveiling Facebook: A Measurement Study of Social Network Based Applications

Unveiling Facebook: A Measurement Study of SocialNetwork Based ApplicationsAtif Nazir, Saqib Raza, Chen-Nee ChuahUniversity of California, Davis{anazir, sraza, chuah}@ucdavis.eduABSTRACT KeywordsOnline social networking sites such as Facebook and MyS- Online Social Networks, Social Games, Facebook, Applica-pace have become increasingly popular, with close to 500 tions, Characterizationmillion users as of August 2008. The introduction of theFacebook Developer Platform and OpenSocial allows third- 1. INTRODUCTIONparty developers to launch their own applications for theOver the past few years, online social networks (OSNs)existing massive user base. The viral growth of these socialhave attracted a massive following, with close to 90% ofapplications can potentially influence how content is pro-undergraduate students in the United States using one orduced and consumed in the future Internet.the other social network on a regular basis [6]. As a result,To gain a better understanding, we conducted a large-twoOSNs(Facebook [21] andMySpace[28]) arenowamongscale measurement study of the usage characteristics of on-the top ten visited websites on the Internet [14].line social network based applications. In particular, weOSNshaveaninherentviralpropertyinthatapplications’developed and launched three Facebook applications, whichuser base can undergo exponential growth given the quickhave achieved a combined subscription base of over 8 mil-spread of information ...