[JDEV] Jabber/Physics Research

[Reggie Smith]

Hello everyone, my name is Reginald Smith and I am a senior 
physics major at the University of Virginia. I was 
wondering if you could help me out on a research project I 
am doing this semester.

A lot of research has been done in physics recently through 
statistical mechanics and graph theory on networks in the 
real world including ecosystems, the Internet (thus the 
famous 19 clicks between web sites paper), and even human 
language. Very little work has been done on seeing if 
social networks follow this same pattern however. In my 
project I am attempting to do a similar study on the 
statistics of instant messaging networks. At first I tried 
to get data on the huge IM networks like AOL Instant 
Messenger but it is far from sure whether or not I will get 
access to the data I need. 

What is it I need? Specifically just a database describing 
a group of users and the users on their buddy lists. I can 
then write a program to do some data mining and statistical 
analysis to calculate the measures I would be interested in 
for my research. The great thing is that I don't even need 
personal information, everyone can be anonymized as numbers 
and the data will still be ok.

I found out about Jabber recently and since it is still 
mostly client/server I was hoping that perhaps you have DBs 
on the server describing users and their contacts. I do not 
need anything else including emails (no I am not a SPAM 
man), personal information (I want research not $), or 
anything else no one wants to give out. Since I will be 
dealing with aggregate statistics I won't really know much 
about a specific user anyway. 

Well, to make this email short (too late I guess) I was 
wondering if anyone could help me out and let me know if 
jabber servers have this kind of information or and if so 
if I could "mine" any servers to get some user info. Any 
help is appreciated.

My full research proposal is available to anyone upon request.


Reginald Smith
University of Virginia

"Knowledge and learning without imagination 
are as enslaving as ignorance; the greater
danger being when you think you know, you are
less likely to question your own assumptions
and reasoning"