Sampling Emerging Social Behavior in Facebook Using Random Walk Models

It has long been recognized that random walk models apply to a great diversity of situations such as: economics, mathematics and biophysics; current trends about Open Social Networks require new approaches for analyzing material publicly accessible. Thus, in this chapter we examine the potential of random walks to further our understanding about monitoring Social Behavior, taking Facebook as a case study. Although most of the work related to random walk models is traditionally used to generate animal movement paths, it is also possible to adapt classic diffusion models into exploratory algorithms with the aim to improve the ability to search under a complex environment. This algorithmic abstraction provides an analogy for a dissipative process within which trajectories are drawn through the virtual nodes of Facebook.