Structure and tie strengths in mobile communication networks

Electronic databases, from phone to e-mails logs, currently provide detailed records of human communication patterns, offering novel avenues to map and explore the structure of social and communication networks. Here we examine the communication patterns of millions of mobile phone users, allowing us to simultaneously study the local and the global structure of a society-wide communication network. We observe a coupling between interaction strengths and the network's local structure, with the counterintuitive consequence that social networks are robust to the removal of the strong ties but fall apart after a phase transition if the weak ties are removed. We show that this coupling significantly slows the…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: 0540348, 0426737, 0513650
• HU
  Harvard University
• ST
  Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia
• HS
  Hungarian Scientific Research Fund
• DO
  Division of Materials Research