Using the ACO algorithm for path searches in social networks

One of the most important types of applications currently being used to share knowledge across the Inter-net are social networks. In addition to their use in social, professional and organizational spheres, social networks are also frequently utilized by researchers in the social sciences, particularly in anthropology and social psychology. In or-der to obtain information related to a particular social net-work, analytical techniques are employed to represent the network as a graph, where each node is a distinct member of the network and each edge is a particular type of relation-ship between members including, for example, kinship or friendship. This article presents a proposal for the efficient solution to one of the most frequently requested services on social networks; namely, taking different types of relation-ships into account in order to locate a particular member of the network. The solution is based on a biologically-inspired modification of the ant colony optimization algorithm.

Using the ACO algorithm for path searches in social networks Articles