A social network approach in Semantic Web Services Selection using Follow the Leader behavior

Automatic discovery of Web services is a crucial task for e-business communities. Locating and selecting "the best" Web service from a vast number of similar services that matches the user's requirements and preferences is a cognitive challenge and requires the use of an intelligent decision making framework. This paper develops a flexible ontological architecture and framework for semantic Web service selection that exploits Goldbaum's innovative "follow the leader" model originally designed as an analytic tool for studying social network behavior and evolution. The framework proposes two new ontologies integrated in a recommender system, which guides a user to select the best service that matches their requirements and preferences. We test and evaluate several behaviors of market leader scenarios using a simulation agent.