Community Evolution (1605.00069v2)

Abstract: The continuous interest in the social network area contributes to the fast development of this field. The new possibilities of obtaining and storing data facilitate deeper analysis of the entire social network, extracted social groups and single individuals as well. One of the most interesting research topic is the network dynamics and dynamics of social groups in particular, it means analysis of group evolution over time. It is the natural step forward after social community extraction. Having communities extracted, appropriate knowledge and methods for dynamic analysis may be applied in order to identify changes as well as to predict the future of all or some selected groups. Furthermore, knowing the most probably change of a given group some additional steps may be performed in order to change this predicted future according to specific needs. Such ability would be a powerful tool in the hands of human resource managers, personnel recruitment, marketing, telecommunication companies, etc.