@inproceedings{bs-accca-14,
  author = {Steffen Brauer and Thomas C. Schmidt},
  title = {{Are Circles Communities? A Comparative Analysis of Selective Sharing in Google+}},
  booktitle = {Proc. of 34th Int. Conf. Dist. Comp. Systems ICDCS -- WS HotPost},
  location = {Madrid, Spain},
  month = {June},
  year = {2014},
  pages = {8--15},
  publisher = {IEEE Press},
  address = {Piscataway, NJ, USA},
  theme = {cw|hp|mint},
  abstract = {The audience of shared content in Social Media is often hard to determine. To protect users from over-sharing, several services provide a feature for grouping contacts. Communities, interest groups, and circles are common examples. In this work, we investigate the structural properties of the circles in Google+ in comparison to the well-known communities. Based on several data sets and scoring functions, we search for the specific characteristics of circles. Our findings indicate that circles indeed form a special substructure that clearly differs from community groups. While the internal connectivity of circles and communities appear fairly similar, circles admit a much enhanced intensity of external relations. Circles resemble communities to which a large number of external links have been added. Selective sharing in circles is thus less confined.},
  doi = {http://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCSW.2014.34},
  file = {../papers/bs-accca-14.pdf},
}