Affiliations: [a] Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci, 32, 20133 Milano, Italy. E-mail: sgaratti@elet.polimi.it, savaresi@elet.polimi.it, bittanti@elet.polimi.it | [b] European Virtual Community Division, Tiscali S.p.A., Viale Trento, 39, 09123, Cagliari, Italy
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Simone Garatti, Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci 32, 20133, Milano, Italy. Tel.: +39 02 2399 3650; Fax: +39 02 2399 3412; E-mail: sgaratti@elet.polimi.it
Abstract: In this paper the analysis and Data-Mining of a large data-set related to a very popular Italian Virtual Community is presented. The Community is constituted by more than half-million registered users, each characterized by a unique nickname and a personal "profile" filled during a registration procedure, on a voluntary basis. Two data-sets have been considered: the Data-Base of the Users (nicknames and profiles), and the log-file of the server hosting the Community web-site. This work is constituted by three main parts: 1) analysis and clustering of the User Data-Base; 2) sessionization of the log-file and clustering of the navigation session database; 3) correlation of User clusters and navigation session clusters. This analysis provides a complete and full-rounded picture of the Virtual Community.
Keywords: data mining, Virtual communities, profiled users, web-log files, sessions, unsupervised clustering, PDDP, heterogeneous data
