The Structure of Comment Networks

Blogs form an important on-line social network as they are maintained periodically, and are easily accessible. An important aspect of any blogspace is the relationship of bloggers based on comments. This important aspect is, however, largely ignored in previous works. In this work, we study the evolution of this specific type of social network, blogosphere comment graph. We look at the densification of the comment network, and study its local patterns. We observe how the comment network evolves as different bloggers place comments on each other. We investigate the densification of this specific network and observe a high correlation between the number of comments placed and received. Finally, we propose a growth model that best describes the behavior of users who place comments.