Complex networks such as the World Wide Web, the web of human sexual contacts, or criminal networks often do not have an engineered architecture but instead are self-organized by the actions of a large number of individuals. From these local interactions nontrivial global phenomena can emerge as small-world properties or scale-free degree distributions. A simple model for the evolution of acquaintance networks highlights the essential dynamical ingredients necessary to obtain such complex

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... k structures. The model generates highly clustered networks with small average path lengths and scale-free as well as exponential degree distributions. It compares well with experimental data of social networks, as for example, coauthorship networks in high energy physics.