Distribution of Node Characteristics in Evolving Tripartite Network.

Many real-world networks have a natural tripartite structure. Investigating the structure and the behavior of actors in these networks is useful to gain a deeper understanding of their behavior and dynamics. In our paper, we describe an evolving tripartite network using a network model with preferential growth mechanisms and different rules for changing the strength of nodes and the weights of edges. We analyze the characteristics of the strength distribution and behavior of selected nodes and selected actors in this tripartite network. The distributions of these analyzed characteristics follow the power-law under different modeled conditions. Performed simulations have confirmed all these results. Despite its simplicity, the model expresses well the basic properties of the modeled network. It can provide further insights into the behavior of systems with more complex behaviors, such as the multi-actor e-commerce system that we have used as a real basis for the validation of our model.