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This study analyses a Twitter dataset because it provides the exact geographic distance between corresponding users. We start by introducing a strong definition of \u2018 friend\u2019 on Twitter (i.e. a definition of bidirectional friendship), requiring bidirectional communication. Next, we utilize geo-tagged mentions delivered by users to determine their locations, where \u2018 @username \u2019 is contained anywhere in the body of tweets. To provide analysis results, we first introduce a friend-counting algorithm. From the fact that Twitter users are likely to post consecutive tweets in the static mode, we also introduce a two-stage distance-estimation algorithm. As the first of our main contributions, we verify that the number of friends of a particular Twitter user follows a well-known power-law distribution (i.e. a Zipf\u2019s distribution or a Pareto distribution). Our study also provides the following newly discovered friendship degree related to the issue of space: the number of friends according to distance follows a double power-law (i.e. a double Pareto law) distribution, indicating that the probability of befriending a particular Twitter user is significantly reduced beyond a certain geographic distance between users, termed the separation point. Our analysis provides concrete evidence that Twitter can be a useful platform for assigning a more accurate scalar value to the degree of friendship between two users.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/0165551515600136","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2015,11,20]],"date-time":"2015-11-20T05:32:39Z","timestamp":1447997559000},"page":"751-764","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":22,"title":["A new understanding of friendships in space: Complex networks meet Twitter"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"41","author":[{"given":"Won-Yong","family":"Shin","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dankook University, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Bikash C.","family":"Singh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Dankook University, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Jaehee","family":"Cho","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Business Administration, Kwangwoon University, Republic of Korea"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Andr\u00e9 M.","family":"Everett","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Management, University of Otago, New Zealand"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2015,11,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-0165551515600136","first-page":"205","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 4th ACM European conference on computer systems (EuroSys\u201909)","author":"Wilson C"},{"key":"bibr2-0165551515600136","first-page":"591","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 19th international World Wide Web conference (WWW2010)","author":"Kwak H"},{"key":"bibr3-0165551515600136","first-page":"37","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2nd ACM workshop on online social networks (WOSN2009)","author":"Viswanath B"},{"key":"bibr4-0165551515600136","first-page":"25","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on online social networks (WOSN2008)","author":"Mislove A"},{"key":"bibr5-0165551515600136","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 8th ACM workshop on social network mining and analysis (SNAKDD2014)","author":"Chen Y"},{"key":"bibr6-0165551515600136","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/30918"},{"key":"bibr7-0165551515600136","first-page":"1","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 9th international conference on information fusion (Fusion2006)","author":"Svenson P"},{"key":"bibr8-0165551515600136","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.0503018102"},{"key":"bibr9-0165551515600136","first-page":"19","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 5th ACM workshop on online social networks (WOSN\u201912)","author":"Kaltenbrunner A"},{"key":"bibr10-0165551515600136","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2422966.2422980"},{"key":"bibr11-0165551515600136","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.socnet.2011.05.006"},{"key":"bibr12-0165551515600136","first-page":"202","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 6th international AAAI conference on weblogs and social media (ICWSM-12)","author":"Kulshrestha J"},{"key":"bibr13-0165551515600136","first-page":"239","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 4th ASE\/IEEE international conference on social computing (SocialCom2012) and the 4th ASE\/IEEE international conference on privacy, security, risk and trust (PASSAT2012)","author":"Frias-Martinez V"},{"key":"bibr14-0165551515600136","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGSPATIAL international workshop on location-based social networks (LBSN2014)","author":"Alowibdi JS"},{"key":"bibr15-0165551515600136","first-page":"1","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGSPATIAL international workshop on location-based social networks (LBSN2010)","author":"Lee R"},{"key":"bibr16-0165551515600136","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/15230406.2014.890072"},{"key":"bibr17-0165551515600136","unstructured":"Jurdak R, Zhao K, Liu J, AbouJaoude M, Cameron M, Newth D. 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