Farshad Kooti
Contact Info:
E-mail:
farshad [at] mpi-sws [dot] org
Postal address:
Max Planck Institute for
Software Systems,
Campus E 1 4,
D-66123 Saarbrucken,
Germany.
Phone:
+49 681-9303-8613
Fax:
+49 681-9303-699
I am a second-year MS student at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems(MPI-SWS), Germany.
I am a member of Networked Systems and working under supervision of Professor Krishna Gummadi.
My main research interest is the study of large and complex networks, especially online social networks (OSNs), which includes the measurement and analysis of social activity in OSNs, and the design of systems that can leverage the findings of this analysis.
Before coming to MPI-SWS, I got my bachelor in Computer Engineering (Software) at the University of Tehran, Iran. You can find more information about me in my CV.
Publications:
• Understanding and Combating Link Farming in the Twitter Social Network
Saptarshi Ghosh, Bimal Viswanath, Farshad Kooti, Naveen Kumar Sharma, Korlam Gautam, Fabricio Benevenuto, Niloy Ganguly, and Krishna Gummadi
Proceedings of the 21st International World Wide Web Conference (WWW’12), Lyon, France, April 2012.
• The birth of retweeting conventions in Twitter
Meeyoung Cha, Krishna Gummadi, Farshad Kooti, Winter A. Mason, and Haeryun Yang
Abstract paper in 3rd Workshop on Complex Networks (CompleNet’12), Melbourne, USA, March 2012. (PDF)
Ongoing/under submission work:
• The Emergence of Conventions in Online Social Networks
Farshad Kooti, Haeryun Yang, Meeyoung Cha, Krishna Gummadi, and Winter A. Mason
Abstract: The way in which social conventions emerge in communities has been of interest to social scientists for decades. Here we report on the emergence of a particular social convention on Twitter, the way to indicate a tweet is being reposted and attributing the content to its source. Initially, different variations are invented and spread through the Twitter network. The inventors and early adopters are well-connected, active, core members of the Twitter community. The diffusion networks of these conventions are dense and highly clustered, so no single user was critical to the adoption of the conventions. Despite being invented at different times and having different adoption rates, only two variations come to be widely adopted. In this paper we describe this process in detail, highlighting insights and raising questions about the emergence of social conventions.
• Geographical Dissection of the Twitter Network
Juhi Kulshrestha, Farshad Kooti, Ashkan Nikravesh, and Krishna Gummadi
Abstract: Geography plays an important role in shaping societal interactions in the offline world. However, as more and more social interactions occur online via social net- working sites like Twitter and Facebook, users can interact with others unconstrained by their geolocations. This prompted us to ask: does offline geography still matter in online social networks? In this paper, we at- tempt to address this question by dissecting the Twitter social network based on users’ geolocations and investigating how users’ geolocation impacts their participation in Twitter, including their connections to others and the information they exchange with them. Our analysis reveals that geography crucially impacts several aspects of the Twitter social network. Specifically, we find (i) a geography-based digital divide with a few countries accounting for a large share of Twitter user population and an even greater share of Twitter “elites”, (ii) that users are heavily biased towards interacting with other users from their own country compared to users in foreign countries, and (iii) that when interacting with users from other countries, both geographical proximity and linguistic similarity play an equally important role.
Link to some of the maps: Twitter population maps
