Digital Ecology: Coexistence and Domination among Interacting Networks

The overwhelming success of Web 2.0, within which online social networks are key actors, has induced a paradigm shift in the nature of human interactions. The user-driven character of Web 2.0 services has allowed researchers to quantify large-scale social patterns for the first time. However, the me...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports Vol. 5; no. 1; p. 10268
Main Authors: Kleineberg, Kaj-Kolja, Boguñá, Marián
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 19.05.2015
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:
639/766/530/2801
639/766/530/2803
Algorithms
Coexistence
Complex systems
Fitness
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
multidisciplinary
Nets (Mathematics)
Population Dynamics
Science
Sistemes complexos
Social Behavior
Social Media
Social Networking
Social organization
Web 2.0
Xarxes (Matemàtica)
ISSN:2045-2322, 2045-2322
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The overwhelming success of Web 2.0, within which online social networks are key actors, has induced a paradigm shift in the nature of human interactions. The user-driven character of Web 2.0 services has allowed researchers to quantify large-scale social patterns for the first time. However, the mechanisms that determine the fate of networks at the system level are still poorly understood. For instance, the simultaneous existence of multiple digital services naturally raises questions concerning which conditions these services can coexist under. Analogously to the case of population dynamics, the digital world forms a complex ecosystem of interacting networks. The fitness of each network depends on its capacity to attract and maintain users’ attention, which constitutes a limited resource. In this paper, we introduce an ecological theory of the digital world which exhibits stable coexistence of several networks as well as the dominance of an individual one, in contrast to the competitive exclusion principle. Interestingly, our theory also predicts that the most probable outcome is the coexistence of a moderate number of services, in agreement with empirical observations.
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ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep10268