Far from the eyes, close on the web

Abstract

Online friendship connections are often not representative of social relationships or shared interest between users, but merely provide a public display of personal identity. A better picture of online social behaviour can be achieved by taking into account the intensity of communication levels between users, yielding useful insights for service providers supporting this communication. Among the several factors impacting user interactions, geographic distance might be affecting how users communicate with their friends. While spatial proximity appears influencing how people connect to each other even on the Web, the relationship between social interaction and spatial distance remains unexplored.