1. Expressing Social Relationships on the Blog through Links and Comments June 25, 2007 – San Jose, CA 2007 Summer Hard Problem Program (SHARP) Noor Ali-Hasan Microsoft Research conducted with Prof. Lada Adamic, University of Michigan School of Information

3. Blogs blogroll number of comments blog posts citations

4. Blogrolls

5. Blog Comments

9. Community Structure

10. Three Blog Communities image source: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ San Jose Kuwait Blogs UAE Blogs DFW Blogs

12. Link Type Overlap for Kuwait Blogs comment links blogroll links in-post links 664 131 325 143 25 48 98

13. Within-Community Blogroll and Citation Links DFW UAE Kuwait

14. Reciprocity Kuwait UAE DFW post citations 19% 16% 26% blogroll links 32% 43% 27% comments 43% N/A N/A

15. Community Boundaries DFW UAE Kuwait

16. Porosity of Community Boundaries Kuwait UAE DFW internal post citations received 79% 24% 16% internal blogroll links given 47% 22% 9% non-anonymous comments received from bloggers within community 42% N/A N/A

17. Online and Offline Relationships

19. Motivation Behind Blogging

21. Intersection of Blogging and Offline Relationships Q8 UAE DFW Few or none of the comments received are left by people known offline 79% 81% 66% Few or none of the comments left on other blogs are on blogs of people known offline 74% 94% 65%

22. Using Blogs to Sustain Real-Life Relationships with Non-Bloggers Q8 UAE DFW Few or none of the comments received are left by people who do not blog but whom they know offline 99% 94% 79%

23. Using Blogs to Maintain and Form Relationships Median number of bloggers listed on blogroll and: Q8 UAE DFW Met in person 5 5 2 Emailed 5 10 12 IM’ed 6 2.5 2 First met in person but now communicate with F2F, phone, email, or IM 5 4 3

26. Blogs in a National Crisis

27. Kuwait in January 2006 Image sources: http://www.kuwaitinfo.org.uk and http://news.bbc.co.uk

28. Visualization of Blog Post Topics