  What drives the propensity for the social network dynamics? Social influence
is believed to drive both off-line and on-line human behavior, however it has
not been considered as a driver of social network evolution. Our analysis
suggest that, while the network structure affects the spread of influence in
social networks, the network is in turn shaped by social influence activity
(i.e., the process of social influence wherein one person's attitudes and
behaviors affect another's). To that end, we develop a novel model of network
evolution where the dynamics of network follow the mechanism of influence
propagation, which are not captured by the existing network evolution models.
Our experiments confirm the predictions of our model and demonstrate the
important role that social influence can play in the process of network
evolution. As well exploring the reason of social network evolution, different
genres of social influence have been spotted having different effects on the
network dynamics. These findings and methods are essential to both our
understanding of the mechanisms that drive network evolution and our knowledge
of the role of social influence in shaping the network structure.
