An Overview of methods for virtual social networks analysis

The increasing achievement of the Web has led people to exploit collaborative technologies in order to encourage partnerships among different groups. The cooperation can be achieved by Virtual Social Networks that facilitate people's social interaction and enable them to remain in touch with friends exploiting the pervasive nature of information devices and services. The interest in analysing Virtual Social Networks has grown massively in recent years, and it involves researches from different fields. This led to the development of different methods to study relationships between people, groups, organisations- and other knowledge-processing entities on the Web. This chapter classifies these methods in two categories. The first category concerns methods used for the network data collection while the second category deals with methods used for the network data visualisation. The chapter gives an example of application of these methods to analyse the Virtual Social Network LinkedIn.