Weblog patterns and human dynamics with decreasing interest

TL;DR

This paper models the decreasing interest in blogging over time using non-homogeneous Poisson processes, revealing that interarrival times follow a power law with an exponential cutoff, supported by empirical data from ScienceNet.cn.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model for interest attenuation in human activity, combining theoretical analysis with empirical validation, and uncovers a new distribution class in human dynamics.

Findings

Interarrival times follow a power law with exponential cutoff.

Empirical data from ScienceNet.cn supports the model.

Demonstrates diversity in human behavioral distributions.

Abstract

Weblog is the fourth way of network exchange after Email, BBS and MSN. Most bloggers begin to write blogs with great interest, and then their interests gradually achieve a balance with the passage of time. In order to describe the phenomenon that people's interest in something gradually decreases until it reaches a balance, we first propose the model that describes the attenuation of interest and reflects the fact that people's interest becomes more stable after a long time. We give a rigorous analysis on this model by non-homogeneous Poisson processes. Our analysis indicates that the interval distribution of arrival-time is a mixed distribution with exponential and power-law feature, that is, it is a power law with an exponential cutoff. Second, we collect blogs in ScienceNet.cn and carry on empirical studies on the interarrival time distribution. The empirical results agree well with the analytical result, obeying a special power law with the exponential cutoff, that is, a special kind of Gamma distribution. These empirical results verify the model, providing an evidence for a new class of phenomena in human dynamics. In human dynamics there are other distributions, besides power-law distributions. These findings demonstrate the variety of human behavior dynamics.