The emergence of inclusive and exclusive virtual communities determined by the preferences of their users

which to build inclusive and exclusive social networks determined by the different expectations and preferences of their users. Social networks are generated using a selforganizing map to cluster the decision makers (DMs) by their friendship acceptance behavior. We analyze the effects on the cluster structure of the resulting social network that follow from modifying the distribution of requesters relative to the preferences of the DMs, the disutility derived from accepting the friendship of an unwanted requester, the costs incurred when searching for potential friends to expand the network of connections, and the minimum networking capacities of the friendship requesters demanded by the DMs.