Modeling Reading and Replying Activities in a BBS Social Network

This paper is devoted to analyze and model user reading and replying activities in a bulletin board system （BBS） social network. By analyzing the data set from a famous Chinese BBS social network, we show how some user activities distribute, and reveal several important features that might characterize user dynamics. We propose a method to model user activities in the BBS social network. The model could reproduce power-law and non-power-law distributions of user activities at the same time. Our results show that user reading and replying activities could be simulated through simple agent-based models. Specifically, manners of how the BBS server interacts with Internet users in the Web 2.0 application, how users organize their reading lists, and how user behavioral trait distributes are the important factors in the formation of activity patterns.