ABSTRACT / The last decade has shown that sometimes even the largest online social networks (OSNs) collapse. Significant cascading mechanisms have been identified in the pattern of abandoning the OSN iWiW at its peak of popularity and after. We set out to examine the key actors who were the first to leave their networks by contrasting explanations based on the structural position of users in the network. Using heterogeneous choice models, we found that bridging social capital is a fundamental motive for not leaving iWiW early; a higher number of connections as well as less clustered ego-networks hindered early abandonment; while early adoption was only a secondary factor.
The presentation is based on the following paper:
Lőrincz L, Koltai J, Győr AF, Takács K (2019): Collapse of an online social network: Burning social capital to create it? Social Networks 57. pp. 43-53.
BIO / Júlia Koltai, PhD, is a visiting faculty in the Department of Network and Data Science at Central European University. She is also a premium postdoctoral researcher at the Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Centre for Social Sciences; and assistant professor at Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Social Sciences. She obtained her PhD in sociology in 2013. Her main research focus is on quantitative methodology and statistics. In the latest years, her interest turned to computational social science and network analysis. She works with large amount of network and text data from sources like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.