Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Social Network Analysis

Mining Social Networks: untangling the social web (http://www.economist.com/node/16910031) discusses some applications of social network analysis. One application area is to predict crime. The Richmond, Virginia police department monitors Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to find out when large, potentially disruptive parties are being planned and deploys officers to these areas. This has supposedly resulted in a dramatic decline in crime, though I could not find any exact figures attributed to this program. The article also looks at applications ranging from security to making loans. One organization flags a loan as more risky if the borrower wants to use the funds for a business they have no links to, and their software notifies them if you have links within your social network to anyone with a criminal record. This last one has me a bit concerned; would you agree to pay a higher interest rate because your Facebook friend's friend committed some kind of fraud three years ago? Would you be better off closing your Facebook and Twitter accounts in a case like this? While in the aggregate such analysis may reduce the bank's risk, I don't think it would be fair to their customers.

1 comment:

  1. This last one has me a bit concerned; would you agree to pay a higher interest rate because gain instagram followers your Facebook friend's friend committed some kind of fraud three years ago?

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