TY - GEN AU - Ugander, Johan AU - Karrer, Brian AU - Backstrom, Lars AU - Marlow, Cameron A2 - T1 - The Anatomy of the Facebook Social Graph JO - PB - C1 - PY - 2011/ VL - IS - SP - EP - UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4503 DO - KW - graph KW - facebook KW - social KW - network L1 - N1 - The Anatomy of the Facebook Social Graph N1 - AB - We study the structure of the social graph of active Facebook users, the

largest social network ever analyzed. We compute numerous features of the graph

including the number of users and friendships, the degree distribution, path

lengths, clustering, and mixing patterns. Our results center around three main

observations. First, we characterize the global structure of the graph,

determining that the social network is nearly fully connected, with 99.91% of

individuals belonging to a single large connected component, and we confirm the

"six degrees of separation" phenomenon on a global scale. Second, by studying

the average local clustering coefficient and degeneracy of graph neighborhoods,

we show that while the Facebook graph as a whole is clearly sparse, the graph

neighborhoods of users contain surprisingly dense structure. Third, we

characterize the assortativity patterns present in the graph by studying the

basic demographic and network properties of users. We observe clear degree

assortativity and characterize the extent to which "your friends have more

friends than you". Furthermore, we observe a strong effect of age on friendship

preferences as well as a globally modular community structure driven by

nationality, but we do not find any strong gender homophily. We compare our

results with those from smaller social networks and find mostly, but not

entirely, agreement on common structural network characteristics. ER -