US Patent 10148608 Characterizing and managing social network interactions

The disclosed embodiments provide a system for facilitating interaction within a social network. During operation, the system obtains a set of attributes of a social network of a first member and a set of historic interactions in the social network. Next, the system analyzes the attributes and the historic interactions to predict an effect of a potential interaction between the first member and a second member of the social network on subsequent interactions in the social network. The system then uses the predicted effect to generate output for modulating the subsequent interactions in the social network.