J. Salerno et al. (Eds.): SBP 2011, LNCS 6589, pp. 205–211, 2011. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 Trust Maximization in Social Networks Justin Zhan and Xing Fang Department of Computer Science North Carolina A&T State University {Zzhan,xfang}@ncat.edu Abstract. Trust is a human-related phenomenon in social networks. Trust research on social networks has gained much attention on its usefulness, and on modeling propagations. There is little focus on finding maximum trust in social networks which is particularly important when a social network is oriented by certain tasks. In this paper, we propose a trust maximization algorithm based on the task-oriented social networks. Keywords: Social Networks; Trust; Maximization. 1 Introduction With the advent of web 2.0 technologies, social networks are propagating rapidly. Instead of granting users passive browsing web content, it allows users to have personal accounts. The users may post their own words, pictures, and movies, etc. to the social network sties. Users on the social networks can also write comments, share personal preferences, and make friends with people they want. Examples of such networks are Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other blogs or forums. While more and more people are registering accounts on social networks and enjoying the new technologies [1], problems inherent with this not-well developed network environment finally came into reality. Hogben [2] pointed out that Trust (Trustworthy Users) will be one major security issue for the future social networks. Trust has been being a topic that intrigues intensive research work from numerous computational scientists. Owing to its human-related characteristics, trust is hard to be modeled or even uniformly defined for computational systems. Marsh introduced a trust computing model [3]. Unfortunately, this frequently-referenced work is highly theoretical and difficult to apply, particularly on social networks [4]. Sztompka [5] defined trust as a bet about the future contingent actions of others. Grandison and Sloman [6] addressed that trust is the firm belief in the competence of an entity to act dependably, securely, and reliably within a specified context. Mui et al. claimed that trust is a subjective expectation an agent has about another’s future behavior based on the history of their encounters [7]. Olmedilla et al. presented that trust of a party A to a party B for a service X is the measurable belief of A in that B behaves dependably for a specified period within a specified context (in relation to service X) [8]. As an important property, trust has also been involved in different types of networks. Online shopping networks such as Amazon and eBay allow buyers to evaluate sellers by posting comments and trust ratings after every purchase. Online