A novel algorithm is developed to systematically identify the most influential individuals in a large social network. These influential individuals in turn can be used for a number of practical applications where we focus on the role of these influential nodes to act as super spreaders in large online social networks such as facebook and twitter. Identification of super spreaders can help develop targeted marketing strategies i.e. place advertisements on the walls and blogs of influential individuals which in turn, will support the efficient spreading of information through online social media.
The developed method is generic and equally applicable in creating a containment plan against a possible viral outbreak and identifying weak infrastructural links in networks such as computer networks, electrical power grids and roads. Other application domains include protein-protein interaction networks in cellular biology, air transport networks in transportation systems, cell phone communication towers in communication engineering, social collaboration networks of movie actors or researchers in sociology, development strategies of cities in urban geography. In brief, wherever real world interconnected systems can be modeled as networks with nodes and edges, the proposed invention can be used to identify influential nodes, which in turn can be utilized in several different ways to solve real world problems.
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