Power is the ability to influence the behavior of people. Five bases of power as modeled by social psychologists John R. P. French and Bertram Raven, are Reward, Coercive, Legitimate, Referent and Expert power.

Expert power can be exhibited by Skillted users. Expert power is based on the perception of knowledge. The perception of knowledge can be derived from the good reputation of the individual on a ratings and reviews system. Having transacted skills with users in the past, and having received good reviews from these users, subsequent users that want to transact the same skill have a basis to use to judge the credibility of the individual.

The power of this skilled individual equates eventually to the ability to propagate the desired skill to a major proportion of the network. Centrality metrics discussed in “Graph Theory for Skillted” can be used to analyse any of the users potential to influence the network by skill propagation.

The power of an individual in this network can also be analyzed by the propagation of content, where the a rare skill that is passed on the most is subsequently propagated by other users overtime.

A property of power, Heterophily, is defined by Rogers et al as the degree to which pairs of individuals who interact are different with respect to certain attributes. Another property, Homophily, is defined as the degree to which pairs of individuals are alike.

Heterophily, the love of the different, would enable the Skillted network to thrive, because individuals with diverse skills could act as bridges between homophilous groups (groups of similarly skilled users) hereby bringing new skills to the network.

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