PHIS: A system for scouting potential hubs and for favoring their “growth” in a Social Internetworking Scenario

In this paper we propose ΦΦ (PHIS), a system for scouting current and potential hubs in a Social Internetworking Scenario (SIS) and for favoring the “growth” of these last ones in such a way that they can become real hubs quickly. ΦΦ operates on a SIS, rather than on a single social network. It uses a hypergraph-based model to represent the SIS. In order to verify if a user is a (current or potential) hub, it considers a range of criteria encompassing her reputation, her capability of receiving and delivering information, her position in the social networks of the SIS and the wideness of her profile. The same criteria are also exploited by ΦΦ to organize a campaign of stimulations to “train” a potential hub to become a real one.