A distributed classification paradigm known as collaborative tagging has been successfully deployed in large-scale web applications designed to manage and share diverse online resources. Users of these applications organize resources by associating with them freely chosen text labels, or tags. Here we regard tags as basic dynamical entities and study the semiotic dynamics underlying collaborative tagging. We collect data from a popular system and focus on tags associated with a given resource. We find that the frequencies of tags obey to a generalized Zipf's law and show that a Yule-Simon process with memory can be used to explain the observed frequency distributions in terms of a simple model of user behavior.
Semiotic dynamics in online social communities / C., Cattuto; Loreto, Vittorio; Pietronero, Luciano. - STAMPA. - 46:SUPPL. 2(2006), pp. 33-37. (Intervento presentato al convegno European Conference on Complex Systems 2006 (ECCS'06) tenutosi a Oxford) [10.1140/epjcd/s2006-03-004-4].
Semiotic dynamics in online social communities
LORETO, Vittorio;PIETRONERO, Luciano
2006
Abstract
A distributed classification paradigm known as collaborative tagging has been successfully deployed in large-scale web applications designed to manage and share diverse online resources. Users of these applications organize resources by associating with them freely chosen text labels, or tags. Here we regard tags as basic dynamical entities and study the semiotic dynamics underlying collaborative tagging. We collect data from a popular system and focus on tags associated with a given resource. We find that the frequencies of tags obey to a generalized Zipf's law and show that a Yule-Simon process with memory can be used to explain the observed frequency distributions in terms of a simple model of user behavior.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
