Connecting relatives in virtual worlds: The kinship networks

The effect Internet is having on our everyday life is huge, expecially for what concerns the number and quality of our social relationships, including friendships and kinship. Fortunately, the complex network theory recently became feasible to analyze real and large social networks, making it possibile to understand their behaviour and dynamics, including why and how social connections are established and what actually imply in the real world, the attitudes towards collaboration or competition among individuals, the discovery of emergent communities and many other issues. In this paper a proposal for building and enhancing personal kinship networks is presented; this Kinship Search System (KSS) allows each user to craft his genealogical tree by exploring and searching existing acquaintances and friendship relations that connect relatives among themselves and with other people.