Title: A metaphorical house of Facebook: usage based on space syntax

Authors: Po-Yu Chen; Li-Pei Peng; Herng-Dar Bih; Cheng-Fu Chou

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan ' Department of Bio-Industry Communication and Development, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan ' Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan ' Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 10617, Taiwan

Abstract: Online social networks are an increasingly popular means of making new friends or maintaining existing friendships. These social networks have replaced some traditional spaces in the real world, but few studies have examined what these new spaces look like in terms of virtual geographies. Facebook is the world's largest online social network, with billions of users sharing content and messages every day. This huge amount of traffic attracts researchers' interest in the behaviour of Facebook users. Facebook can also adjust their policies based on the user behaviour. While previous studies of Facebook user behaviour have relied on questionnaires which are subject to potential risks and limitations. This study directly analyses Facebook user behaviour by designing a model to predict how various types of users analogise their use of Facebook to everyday spaces.

Keywords: online social networks; OSNs; Facebook; space syntax; clustering; user behaviour.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSC.2016.082770

International Journal of Space-Based and Situated Computing, 2016 Vol.6 No.4, pp.252 - 261

Received: 16 Jan 2016
Accepted: 31 Dec 2016
Published online: 10 Mar 2017 *

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