Since last more than forty years, social network analysis (SNA) techniques have evolved as one of the successful applications of Internet. Numerous reasons demand better understanding of the structure of social networks, need of their analysis and their impact on future Internet and society. For instance, finding the shared interest and trust could be one of the reasons to study social networks. Moreover, if in future, distributed online social networks are popular and bandwidth intensive, they can have a significant impact on Internet traffic, just as current peer-to-peer content distribution networks do. Regardless of one's stance on these phenomena, a better understanding of the structure of social networks is likely to improve our understanding of the opportunities, limitations and threats associated with these ideas. For instance, gigantic size of online social networks, their dynamic behavior, clustering and privacy policies held by users are some of the major challenges. This chapter presents an engraved review spanning from need of SNA to the implications associated with it.
Blockchain is a shared and distributed ledger across an open or private processing system that expedites the process of recording transactions and data management in a business network. It empowers the design of decentralized transactions, smart contracts, and intelligent assets that can be managed over internet. It formulates the revolutionary decision-making governance systems with more egalitarian users, and autonomous organizations that can control over internet without any third-party involved. This disruptive technology has tremendous opportunities that open the doors to detract the power from centralized authorities in the sphere of communications, business, and even politics or law. This chapter outlines an introduction to the blockchain technologies and its decentralized architecture, especially from the perspective of challenges and limitations. The objective is to explore the current research topics, benefits, and drawbacks of blockchain. The study explores its potential applications for business and future directions that is all set to transfigure the digital world.
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