BiTG4Rec: Bidirectional Transformer Graphs for Sequential-Social Recommendation

Sequential-social recommendation systems are essential for understanding users’ evolving interests and predicting their future behaviors. While existing methods employing bidirectional graph modeling have shown promising results in capturing user interactions, they face significant challenges in effectively leveraging bidirectional information and addressing dynamic user preferences. To overcome these limitations, we propose Bidirectional Transformer Graphs for Sequential-Social Recommendation (BiTG4Rec), a novel framework that integrates both supervised and self-supervised learning to analyze dynamic user preferences at sequential and social levels through bidirectional graphs. Our approach comprises three core components: 1) a Bidirectional Dynamic Graph Convolutional Network (BiDGCN) that models long-term sequential preferences, 2) a Bidirectional Dynamic Graph Attention Network (BiDGAT) that captures short-term sequential preferences, and 3) a Bidirectional Hyperbolic Graph Contrastive Learning module (BiHGCL) that extracts social preferences. To unify these diverse signals, we introduce a TransformerGated mechanism that dynamically integrates long-term, short-term, and social preferences. Extensive experiments on multiple real-world datasets demonstrate that BiTG4Rec consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods, validating its effectiveness for sequential-social recommendation tasks.