- published: 16 Jul 2010
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A social network is a social structure made up of a set of actors (such as individuals or organizations) and the dyadic ties between these actors. The social network perspective provides a clear way of analyzing the structure of whole social entities. The study of these structures uses methods of social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics.
Social networks and the analysis of them is an inherently interdisciplinary academic field which emerged from social psychology, sociology, statistics, and graph theory. Georg Simmel authored early structural theories in sociology emphasizing the dynamics of triads and "web of group affiliations."Jacob Moreno is credited with developing the first sociograms in the 1930s to study interpersonal relationships as structures in which people were points and the relationships between them were drawn as connecting lines. These approaches were mathematically formalized in the 1950s and theories and methods of social networks became pervasive in the social and behavioral sciences by the 1980s. Social network analysis is now one of the major paradigms in contemporary sociology, and is also employed in a number of other social and formal sciences. Together with other complex networks, it forms part of the nascent field of network science.
Michael Trent Reznor (born May 17, 1965) is an American singer–songwriter, composer, and record producer. As both a vocalist and a multi-instrumentalist, Reznor has led the industrial rock project Nine Inch Nails beginning in 1988, and as of 2010 he and his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, are also members of the post-industrial band How to Destroy Angels alongside fellow composer Atticus Ross, with whom Reznor has scored two films. Reznor was previously associated with the bands Option 30, Exotic Birds, and Tapeworm, among others. Reznor left Interscope Records in 2007, and is now an independent recording artist.
Reznor began creating music early in his life, and cites his Western Pennsylvania childhood as an early influence. After being involved with a number of synthesizer-based bands in the mid-80s, Reznor gained employment at Right Track Studios in Cleveland, Ohio and began creating his own music during the studio's closing hours under the moniker Nine Inch Nails. Reznor's first release as Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine (1989), was a commercial and critical success, and he has since released seven major studio releases. Outside of Reznor's chief project Nine Inch Nails, he has contributed to many other artists' albums, including Marilyn Manson and Saul Williams. In 1997, Reznor appeared in Time magazine's list of the year's most influential people, and in Spin magazine he was described as "the most vital artist in music."
The Winklevoss twins (born August 21, 1981) are American rowers and internet entrepreneurs, Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss. They competed in the men's pair rowing event at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They are known for co-founding HarvardConnection (later renamed ConnectU) along with Harvard classmate Divya Narendra. In 2004, the Winklevoss brothers sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for $140 million, claiming he stole their ConnectU idea to create the popular social networking site. They are now venture capitalists
The Winklevoss twins were born in Southampton, New York, and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. Their father, Howard E. Winklevoss, was a professor of actuarial science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of Pension Mathematics with Numerical Illustrations, and founder of Winklevoss Consultants and Winklevoss Technologies.
The twins went to the Greenwich Country Day School before attending the Brunswick School for high school. They showed a fondness for the classics in high school, studying Latin and Ancient Greek. During their junior year, they co-founded the crew program. They enrolled at Harvard University in 2000 for their undergraduate studies where they majored in economics, earning A.B. degrees and graduating in 2004. At Harvard, they were members of the men's varsity crew, the Porcellian Club and the Hasty Pudding Club.