A social network approach in Semantic Web Services Selection using Follow the Leader behavior

Automatic discovery of Web services is a crucial task for e-business communities. Locating and selecting "the best" Web service from a vast number of similar services that matches the user\´s requirements and preferences is a cognitive challenge and requires the use of an intelligent decision making framework. This paper develops a flexible ontological architecture and framework for semantic Web service selection that exploits Goldbaum\´s innovative "follow the leader" model originally designed as an analytic tool for studying social network behavior and evolution. The framework proposes two new ontologies integrated in a recommender system, which guides a user to select the best service that matches their requirements and preferences. We test and evaluate several behaviors of market leader scenarios using a simulation agent.