Serial sharers: Detecting split identities of Web authors

Abstract

There are currently hundreds of millions of people contributing content to the Web. They do so by rating items, sharing links, photos, music and video, creating their own webpage or writing them for friends, family, or employer, socializing in social networking sites, and blogging their daily life and thoughts. Of those who author Web content there is a group of people who contribute to more than a single Web entity, be it on a different host, on a different application or under a different username. We name this group Serial Sharers. In this paper we analyze patterns in the contributions of Serial Sharers. We examine the overlap between their individual contributions and propose a method for detecting their pages in large and diverse collections of pages.