Heterogenous scaling in inter-event time of on-line bookmarking

Peng WANG, Xiao-Yi XIE, Chi Ho YEUNG, Bing-Hong WANG

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlespeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper, we study the statistical properties of bookmarking behaviors in Delicious.com. We find that the inter-event time (τ) distributions of bookmarking decay in a power-like manner as τ increases at both individual and population levels. Remarkably, we observe a significant change in the exponent when the inter-event time increases from the intra-day range to the inter-day range. In addition, the dependence of the exponent on individual activity is found to be different in the two ranges. Instead of monotonically increasing with activity, the inter-day exponent peaks around 3. These results suggest that the mechanisms driving human actions are different in the intra-day and inter-day ranges. We further show that the global distributions of less active users are closer to an exponential distribution than those of more active users. Moreover, a universal behavior in the inter-day range is observed by considering the rescaled variable τ/(τ). Finally, the possible causes of these phenomena are discussed. Copyrgiht © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2395-2400
JournalPhysica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
Volume390
Issue number12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2011

Citation

Wang, P., Xie, X.-Y., Yeung, C. H., & Wang, B.-H. (2011). Heterogenous scaling in inter-event time of on-line bookmarking. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 390(12), 2395-2400. doi: 10.1016/j.physa.2011.02.026

Keywords

  • Inter-event time distribution
  • Power law
  • Human dynamics

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