In light of all the recent startups in the social networking field, this book offers a sober and scholarly assessment of the main concepts. Written by scientists, and for scientists, it avoids the hype promulgated by various websites like Ryze, Friendster and LinkedIn.
The book studies what we might, perhaps, be able to learn from a close analysis of social dynamics. The treatment is heavily mathematical, and is not for a casual reader. It should be noted that any insights that might be extracted from the book, and applied in a website, may not be protected by a patent filing. Since the book constitutes a public dissemination of its ideas. So such insights unfortunately have little protection.