Physical Theories of the Evolution of Online Social Networks: A Discussion Impulse

The evolution of online social networks (OSN) is a hot topic in computer science. Surprisingly a lot of research on this topic was also done by physicists - following the long history of studying networks in physics. To give an interdisciplinary discussion impulse, this paper intends to delineate the major physical theories of the evolution of (O)SN. Furthermore the paper presents a future research gap, which consists in the lack of adoption of the physical theory of preferential attachment on OSN by computer scientists.