Profiling Social Networks by Analyzing User Tagging Behavior

Can an analysis of the tagging data of users serve as a useful metric to profile social networks? According to Ying Ding, Elin K. Jacob, James Caverlee, Michael Fried and Zhixiong Zhang the answer is a qualified "yes." In Profiling Social Networks: A Social Tagging Perspective, D-Lib Magazine (March/April 2009) the authors report on their investigation of social tagging using data gathered from Delicious, Flickr and YouTube for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007. Preliminary findings indicate that it is possible to profile a social network through the analysis of tagging data. Interestingly, the authors find that Delicious is a more representative venue for analyzing the social tagging behavior of users than either Flickr or YouTube. Are Delicious users more tech savvy? [JH]