Measuring the impact of hits
Abstract
Many real systems can be represented as growing networks where new nodes and links gradually emerge. The Barabási-Albert model for growing networks, and many models inspired by it, are based on the idea that nodes compete for links. However, the strength and the very presence of this competition have not been tested. We propose a robust statistical approach to quantify how strongly nodes compete for links, and apply it to data from various real systems---commenting on online news and cinema attendance data. We find a range of possible behaviors, from the perfectly elastic case, where new entrants shape network growth in a way that leaves the rest of the system unaffected, to an intermediate case where new entrants measurably affect the rest. Perfect competition is never observed. These findings have direct implications for complex systems modeling and e-commerce applications.
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BibTeX
@misc{medo2026measuring,
title = {{Measuring the impact of hits}},
author = {Matúš Medo and Liudmila Rozanova},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.35104},
eprint = {2609.35104},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.35104},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Measuring the impact of hits
AU - Matúš Medo
AU - Liudmila Rozanova
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.35104
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.35104
AB - Many real systems can be represented as growing networks where new nodes and links gradually emerge. The Barabási-Albert model for growing networks, and many models inspired by it, are based on the idea that nodes compete for links. However, the strength and the very presence of this competition have not been tested. We propose a robust statistical approach to quantify how strongly nodes compete for links, and apply it to data from various real systems---commenting on online news and cinema attendance data. We find a range of possible behaviors, from the perfectly elastic case, where new entrants shape network growth in a way that leaves the rest of the system unaffected, to an intermediate case where new entrants measurably affect the rest. Perfect competition is never observed. These findings have direct implications for complex systems modeling and e-commerce applications.
ER -