  This paper presents a novel spectral algorithm with additive clustering
designed to identify overlapping communities in networks. The algorithm is
based on geometric properties of the spectrum of the expected adjacency matrix
in a random graph model that we call stochastic blockmodel with overlap (SBMO).
An adaptive version of the algorithm, that does not require the knowledge of
the number of hidden communities, is proved to be consistent under the SBMO
when the degrees in the graph are (slightly more than) logarithmic. The
algorithm is shown to perform well on simulated data and on real-world graphs
with known overlapping communities.
