A feeds-based analysis of OSN activities

Feeds are user-generated contents or actions in online social network (OSN). Users generate feeds for self-expression and view feeds generated by friends. In this paper, we try to analyze activities of users in one OSN by exploring two aspects: whether users are becoming inactive in generating feeds, and how these inactive users affect the feeds received by other users and thus cause collapse of the whole social network. We study the life cycle and feed inter-event time of users in a community of RenRen, and find that more and more users are decreasing the activity in generating feeds and as a result it causes the decrease of velocity and diversity of feeds received by users. Our simulation shows when 30% of users become inactive in generating feeds, the whole community will be affected and collapse in a short time.