What approach are you taking when looking at budding and failed social networks? Did you do a quantitative study or were you looking for patterns in a more qualitative fashion?
You're right, it's a bit outside the normal ambit of computer science. I'm interested in multidisciplinary questions; we do also have non computer scientists among the authors, for example Prof. Nissenbaum http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/
Overall, as you suggest, our analysis is a mixture of CS, economics and social science.
It is one of those areas where the same maths is applicable to seeming disconnected practical/physical areas, like how psychologists are starting to use the maths of quantum probability to model certain human behaviours (apparently it seems to much more accurately model the fuzziness of our thought processes than any "traditional" statistics methods).
The applicability of the same maths to seemingly disconnected areas is one of the things that convinces many that a "grand theory of everything" may one day be possible rather than there being disparate base laws at different scales and locations (or the third possibility of course: turtles all the way down).