AimFight is a new AOL website created as an extension for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). Each AIM user has a “Buddy List,” in which all of the user’s online friends are listed. From this one can construct a time-dependent social network in which users are nodes and edges are directed one-way between nodes if one node has the other on its Buddy List. The AimFight website itself is a flash application which allows the user to enter two AIM screen names (a user’s online identification) for participation in an AimFight. The more “popular” user wins the AimFight.
The actual details behind the networking algorithm used to determine popularity hasn’t been released, but the basics are available.
The algorithm works sort of like a stripped down PageRank method used by Google to rank websites. Only “buddies” who have you on their buddy list, as in are linked to you, count for your popularity score. However, buddies with more in-links themselves count more than those that have less in-links. This is analogous to a website being linked to by another site with a high hub score. In the AimFight algorithm though, there is no authority score and no updating with subsequent rounds. AimFight also only counts out to three buddies for the popularity score. While this is not as complex an algorithm as PageRank, AimFight still does effectively the same thing in ranking the “popularity” of AIM users.
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