Portals and KM

Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem

Valdis Krebs pointed me to this interesting study, Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem by Brian Uzzi and Jarrett Spiro. The authors, said “Small world networks have received disproportionate notice in diverse fields because of their suspected effect on system dynamics. The authors analyzed the small world network of the creative artists who made Broadway musicals from 1945 to 1989.” Now I have seen a number of those within the analysis. They authors concluded. “the varying “small world” properties of the systemic-level network of these artists affected their creativity in terms of the financial and artistic performance of the musicals they produced. The small world network effect was parabolic; performance increased up to a threshold, after which point the positive effects reversed. “

In other words, who you know is critical to success, This was published in the American Journal of Sociology. I was a Sociology major as an under grad. I guess I missed my calling.

Research on Social Network Sites – Dana Boyd

Danah Boyd has developed a list of known articles on social network sites that she last updated in April 2008. It is very comprehensive and useful. She she writes, “Example social network sites researched include: Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Cyworld, Mixi, Black Planet, Dodgeball, Twitter, and LiveJournal….The research contained below is focused specifically on social network sites (or "social networking" sites). Some of this is connected to social media, social software, Web2.0, social bookmarking, educational technologies, communities research, etc. “ I have skimmed the list and it is an excellent resource.

She adds. “I try to keep this up to date so please send me additional publications as you learn of them. I do not host articles so only those hosted elsewhere are linked.” So send her stuff. Here is her Danah Boyd site.

It’s the Sociology, Not the Technology: How to be Effective on the Web - Lessons from the Obama campaign

Last year I was on a panel at the Enterprise 2.0 conference titled: 90% People, 10% Technology. The premise being that many people say as they go to implement a new technology, Well, It’s really 90% People, 10% Technology.” Then they invest in the opposite ratio. My good friend, Valdis Krebs makes a similar point in his recent post, It's the networks, stupid, about how the Obama campaign is using the web. In the context of linking to an excellent NYT OpEd, The Obama Connection, he writes:

“…the Dean campaign thought they understood the internet in 2004, but they really did not get "social networks". They made some breakthroughs in technology, but screwed up the sociology, and lost in a big way. Obama seems to be focusing first on the sociology of building networks and then supporting those social networks with technology -- the correct sequence of attention. The Obama campaign is successful because they know that sociology & technology properly mixed give a better result than either of them alone, or improperly mixed.”

I have found it always makes sense to figure out the business problem and then apply the technology. This works whether it is the business of business or the business of political campaigns. I have already written a bit about Obama’s use of the web on this blog. In one post, How Barack Obama is Using Web and Enterprise 2.0 in the US Primary Campaign Through Central Desktop, I quoted commenter Rob Patterson (from the Fast version) who said, “Others say -”He has no experience” But isn’t the organization of his campaign a model for effectiveness and does it not show a brilliant insight into his understanding of the new reality? Imagine a Fortune 500 CEO with this approach and what they could do."

Here is a model for viral marketing for any web startup. There lessons to be learned for any business that wants to make better use of the web. The NYT piece seems to agree as it mentioned, “More than any other factor, it has been Barack Obama’s grasp of the central place of Internet-driven social networking that has propelled his campaign for the Democratic nomination into a seemingly unassailable lead…”

Valdis also shares a useful white paper in his post, Political Conversations, in which discusses the new social nature of voting.

Social Network Analysis Success Story

I learned of this social network analysis success story through Valdis Krebs blog. In this case a community organization worked with the city and tenants to uncover a conspiracy of slumlords that were evading city requirements and making living conditions terrible for their tenants while they drew money out of the buildings. The social network analysis uncovered the relationships that led to discover of the mastermind hiding several steps behind the scenes. The work led to criminal convictions and civil suits found in the tenants favor. Valdis shows the step-by-step process that was used to get to the bottom of the case, a great job. He quotes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." Transparency promotes good behavior and this is also one of the values of the new web.

I lived in NYC in the early 70s with several others in a run down apartment building on the Lower East Side. In our case, we knew the landlord directly as he was not hiding behind a screen of front people, at least not yet. We were lucky with this access. But he still put profit over tenants’ rights and living conditions. I was working for the city and ran into him in city hall once, which made him a bit cautious about dealing me. I did not work in the right area and had no real power with the city but the impression seemed to count. When things needed to be fixed and the landlord would not cooperate, one of my roommates would be aggressive on the phone and then turn the phone over to me to resolve the issue, as I would be polite in contrast, but remain firm. We were lucky with the impression of this city connection and helped the other tenants to act together.

My job with the city was to help organize tenants to take control over buildings that the city would take over from slumlords because of multiple violations and turn over to the tenants. The city had to find the real owner to take possession. This experience exposed me to the abuses that slumlords did to make extra money. The city could have used the type of social network analysis that Valdis describes.

NetWiki: coverage of complex networks and network science

Here is Netwiki for collecting data and collaborating on research about complex networks and applications of network science. It is maintained by some math guys at the University of North Carolina. It makes sense as there is nothing else to do in the research triangle except ACC basketball. The pages for shared code and shared data are open to the public. The concepts page has some concepts that are useful in network theory such as betweenness and centrality (although both of the terms ask for a good definition so here is your chance for immortality). As they wrote: “So far, the public groups remain very sparse, so we welcome and indeed encourage input from others in the networks science and social networks communities.” Seriously, this is an excellent resource to be aware of to contribute to.

Friends Get Redefined in 2007: aka Two Facebookers meet on the Street

Here is a statement on 2007 from Geek and Poke cartoons. Happy holidays and thanks to Valdis Krebs for sharing this, Then there was this one about corporate blogs in Scenes from the new workplace.

Contrary to Social graph-iti, Social Networking is more than a Fad

This must be like the glitterati, and the technorati. A somewhat condescending article appeared in the Economist recently titled, Social graph-iti. The article leads off with “There's less to Facebook and other social networks than meets the eye. A NEW fad is sweeping across Silicon Valley, causing excitement, confusion and hyperbole not seen since the dotcom bubble.” So we know we are in trouble.

After dumping on all the hype, the article does say that “Facebook has made two genuine breakthroughs. The first was its decision to let outsiders write programs and keep all the advertising revenues these might earn…The entire internet industry reckons this was clever and is planning to copy it.” Many already had as Google has been doing this to their advantage for years.

It goes on to say that “Facebook's second masterstroke is its “mini-feed”, an event stream on user pages that keeps users abreast of what their friends are doing…For many users, this is addictive.” I do not find it addictive but I do find it useful. These two features are one of the reasons that Serena is using Facebook as their intranet.

The article then gets back to bashing with, “Silicon Valley's craze for the “social graph”, however, is overdone. The term has been around in computer science for decades, says Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, so it is puzzling that Mr Zuckerberg should get any special credit for using.” While I agree that Facebook did not originate many of the things it does including social graphs, it certainly has implemented these things well. Google also did not originate many things that it implemented well. It is easy to dump on the hype.

Then it goes to say something useful but obvious to anyone who blogs, “the future of social networking will not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities on the internet to replicate the millions that exist offline.” Just has there is not one blosphere and its success is that there are many ones of varying sizes. So this does not negate the usefulness of social networking, it reaffirms is value.

Thanks to Valdis Krebs for pointing this article out. Here is an online community diagram from Valdis, that adds some context to the idea of many social networking communities. In the diagram, every node in the network represents a person. A link between two nodes reveals a relationship or connection between two people in the community -- the social network. Most on-line communities consist of three social rings -- a densely connected core in the center, loosely connected fragments in the second ring, and an outer ring of disconnected nodes, commonly known as lurkers.

Networks, Patterns & Paintings – Valdis Krebs

Here is a nice post form my friend, and social networking expert, Valdis Krebs. In Networks, Patterns & Paintings he discusses how network patterns experts are applying their algorithms to a group of recently found paintings -- suspected to be by Jackson Pollock. Valdis wrote that an initial study of these paintings cast doubt on their authenticity. Now, a group of physicists from Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University have come out with what they say is a better analysis. They conclude that “by analyzing paintings by Pollock and others, that fractal criteria provide no information about artistic authenticity.” Still it was an interesting idea. I guess we have to leave authenticity to more subjective analysis.

Valids leaves the question open and closes with ths. “We as humans leave behind repeated patterns and motifs in our architecture, music, writing, and social networks... so why not in how we paint?”

Visualization of Networks

Here is an interesting collection of visualization of networks from Trust art, a free, collaborative project for collecting and analyzing information about trust metrics. Links included Visualizing the Flickr social network, and visual complexity. The latter has some wonderful art work on networks. Jessica Lipnack added some excellent further commentary on her post, The art of networks.

SunBelt 28 - Social Network Analysis Annual Meeting

The big show for social network analysis people occurs on Jnauary 22-28 in St. Petersburg, FL, a good time to be there. It is sponsored by INSNA - The International Network for Social Network Aanalysis. You can find the details on their site. I subscribe to their email discussion forum and learn some interesting ideas through the dialogue. There are also other events mentioend such as the CFP: Second International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, March 31-April 2, 2008, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. The paper submission date for this event is December 3, 2007.

Future Lawyers Use of Social Networking Tools

Doug Cornelius posted an interesting survey on his KM Space blog. He conducted a survey of law school summer associates. He said that these are preliminary results:

More than 80% have a Facebook account
Of those, 2/3 check Facebook at least once a day
Only 25% have a LinkedIn account
Of those, only 10% check LinkedIn once a week, with the rest answering rarely
Only 20% have a MySpace account
Of those, 1/4 check it once a week, with the rest answering rarely

I now have a Facebook account and recently wrote on The Emergence of Facebook for Business. I am likely to check it frequently as I like the rich context it provides. I never “check” LinkedIn but I do respond to things that come through it. I opened a MySpace account because of a friend but never check it so I guess I correlate with these findings. I look forward to seeing the final results from Doug. He and I are also connected through Facebook. web 2.0

Social Networks Metrics

Valdis Krebs had a very useful post recently, Leading Indicators, in which he listed some metrics he used to track social networks. Here the four metrics that some of his non-profit clients have implemented (in his words):

Increase in Size of Network -- attracting new people to the mission

Increase in internal network connectivity -- connecting the right people to get things done

Increase in connections to valuable third parties -- bringing in outside skills and perspectives

Increase in projects formed with all of the above -- creating value-added projects out of the interconnected skills.

Valdis has found that increases in the above four metrics are leading indicators of good things ahead for the network. I think they are useful best practice. He also provided a link to more social network analysis measures. enterprise social media

Maps of Science – Making Relationships in Research more Transparent

Here is an interesting web site, Maps of Science. which offers maps of relationships in scientific research, Fortunately it does not just offer the diagrams but also provides analysis. You can look at topics, industries, geographic locations and even two cities, Boston and Paris, so far.

It says “Boston has strength in nodes (indicating a greater than expected number of publications on a topic) and edges (the lines between nodes, indicating a greater than expected number of publications that bridge two topics). The majority of strengths are in medicine. Of particular prominence is research on Alzheimers, AIDS, Cancer and the health care system. In the top of the diagram are major strengths in astrophysics.”

You can also drill down to look inside specific areas. The work is based on Thomson’s 2003 citation databases. Thanks to John Maloney for sharing this. Information Esthetics will provide a free copy for the price of shipping. Information Esthetics is a “fledgling organization dedicated to exploring those areas where information content can enhance esthetic experience and esthetic consideration can enhance information content.”

Graphic Friendships - Cesar Brea

Here is a promising idea from Cesar Brea who is exploring mashups and other web 2.0 applications. He writes in Graphic Friendships about the concept of using tagging behavior to find people of similar interests.

“Here's how it would work. The proximity between me and any other user in the system can be calculated according to the frequency with which another person uses tags I also use. This happens on two dimensions -- one is how often another person has used each tag I've used; another is the overlap between the tags we use, regardless of tagging frequency. So if a person is in my "high-high quadrant" (we're both using the same tags a lot), maybe I'd be interested in subscribing to the other person's bookmark stream. This might be especially true if "a lot" is defined absolutely for the other person, if only relatively for me, so I can filter out the great Long-Tail unwashed. "Show me people who have used my top ten tags 100 times or more."

Cesar has done work in contact network systems in the past so it is not a surprise that he looks to what web 2.0 can provide in this space. I look forward to see how the concept progresses. Cesar is working with Solution Grove on the effort. Also, check out their mashup demo.

Here is some followup on the idea in graphic friendships part two.

Bloggers and Innovators – Valdis Krebs

Here is an interesting comparison of the networks of blogeers and innovators in North East Ohio by Valdis Krebs. He writes, “In looking at these two networks in NEO, we see some overlaps. Some of the same people pop up in both the Blogger Network and in the Innovator Network. We also see overlaps between Mavens and Connectors -- some people play both roles. Are these key influencers in reforming our regional economy?”

I would imagine that there are more mavens in the innovators and more connectors in the bloggers. However, there were more mavens that connectors listed for the bloggers and the breakdown was not available for the innovators.

Valdis nicely defines the terms from Gladwell. “Connectors link different parts of the network that would otherwise not be connected, while Mavens are key resources that others go to for advice, opinion and expertise.”

Valdis has written another interesting study, Managing the Connected Organization.

Valdis on Voting

Here is a topical post by Valdis Krebs, Election Day. Have you voted yet?

Soccer Team Thrives Through SNA

Valdis Krebs writes about a college soccer team that used social network analysis to help turn the team around in his post on Weaving Team Nets. The team won the national college championship the next year. Which may be coincidental but it makes a good story. Valdis makes a very good point in the opening to his post:

“Teams are not made of talent alone. It is how the talents of individual players intersect and interact that distinguishes a good team from a collection of good players. From the New England Patriots, to the Detroit Pistons, to the Chicago White Sox -- teams without a superstar at every position win championships.”

This is something I have written on before.

Detroit Shows Teamwork Trumps Individual Talent – when they beat the Lakers

Teamwork Trumps Star Power Again – when the Patriots won their third Super Bowl

I coached a soccer team for seven years. It was my daughter’s team. I noticed there that teamwork was the key. I learned a lot from the experience. We were able to hold our own with the boys team in special challenge matches much to their dismay because the girls were much better at teamwork.

Helping to analyze and support better teamwork in sports is a great application of SNA. I think I will send the suggestion to the New England Patriots. But then Bill Belichuk has likely already read the article and may be calling Validis now even through Valdis lives in Cleveland.

The story is also written up in the Business Week special issue on Competition -- Game Plan: First Find The Leaders.

Knowledge Network - SNA Tool from Microsoft

Microsoft in entering the social network analysis tool space with Knowledge Network that will work with Sharepoint 2007. As the related Knowledge Network Tean Blog says, “Knowledge Network is designed to help you discover your own social capital as well as get a more complete understanding of skills that you have. Then it enables you to publish your profile so that others in the organization may find you as well as give you the opportunity to find others that you may need to connect with to achieve your goals. Because in today’s business it’s all about connections.”

It is still in Beta and only available now to those who have access to SharePoint 2007 Beta 2 on the Microsoft Betaplace site. I guess you will know if you are in this category. The rest of us have to wait. The Knowledge Network Tean Blog has some good posts on the tool and social network analysis in general. SNA has really become mainstream, at least Microsoft is labeling their tool to be in this space so they see the market potential. But what functionality does it have?

The blog says that KN works to create employee profiles this way. It "automatically generates a profile for each member from their e-mail it automatically extracts your keywords including noun phrases and your key contacts (both internal and external). Then once the profile is generated you have the chance to review it. You can add or delete any elements in your profile." Then, "periodically (the default is every 14 days) you receive an e-mail that shows the net new contacts and keywords you’ve used in the last two weeks and sends you an e-mail with that information broken out by keywords, contacts and external contacts." Now this may be a useful function but it does compare to the full featured SNA tools available. I am sure there must be more and I look forward to finding out the other things it can do.

Thanks to Mauro Cardarelli for pointing this out.

World Cup Networking

I recently learned about a network analysis of passing in the World Cup final. I saw the match and was pleased that my team won. This network shows the passes from every player to those three team-mates he passes to most frequently. Strength of arcs displays the number of passes. Size of nodes displays the influence (flowbetweenness) of a player. Good use of network analysis.

Social Share – Andy Havens

Andy Havens adds a useful term to our vocabulary. social share. or as he defines it:

Social share: the relative importance of participation in a group to a member of that group — or association of one group to another group — as measured by activities that involve resources or influence.

Then he provides a long explanation. Andy says you only have so many best friends, favorite foods, etc. for the terms to be meaningful. I agree so far and am reminded of the LinkedIn people who have over 7,000 friends and want to add me to their list. One was even called himself “your LinkedIn Daddy,” The ony point I disagree is the blog list where he says that ones over 30 he ignores. I am very guilty here but I just keep adding new ones that I like. With over two years of blogging I am pleased that there are over 30. I add ones that I want a quick reference to sine I am using my blog for my personal knowledge management system. I even added Andy,s blog, Tinker X, as there is good stuff there.

Analyzing Actors and Their Discussion Topics by Semantic Social Network Analsysis – Peter Gloor

Peter Gloor recenty completed a paper, Analyzing Actors and Their Discussion Topics by Semantic Social Network Analsysis, with Yan Zhao. It discusses how iQuest can look at organizational behavior while respecting privacy. It discusses how iQuest can compare different interaction channels (such as emails and blogs), look at network membership, and correlate organizational performance and creativity.

iQuest is a hybrid tool that uses a form of social network to enhance its search results and content analysis to enhance its social network analysis results. It can look at structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. Peter is presenting the paper at the 10th International Conference on Information Visualisation 5, 6, 7 July 2006 in London, a good time to be there.

The Strength of Internet Ties – New Pew Report

Jeffrey Boase, John Horrigan, Barry Wellman and Lee Rainie created the recently available Pew Report, The Strength of Internet Ties. It is based on the findings of two surveys on Americans' use of the Internet done in the Spring of 2004 involving over 4,000 individuals.

Among other things, it looks at how email supplements, rather than replaces, the communication people have with others in their network. It also shows the internet has largely increased communication between friends and family and detracted from it. The survey finds that “internet users are more likely than non-users to have been helped by those in their networks as they faced important events in their life.” This makes sense to me. I have a number of family and friends networks. The people who do not have email are left out of a lot of communication. I also communicate much more with these people than prior to email.

Barry Wellman, one of the researchers called the rise of "networked individualism." He says that “users of modern technology are less tied to local groups and increasingly tied to looser and more geographically scattered networks.”

He goes on, "The internet and the cell phone have transformed communication: Instead of being based on house-to-house interactions, they are built on person-to-person exchanges.This creates a new basis for community. Rather than relying on a single community for social support, individuals often must actively seek out a variety of appropriate people and resources for different situations."

The report also indicates that 45% of internet users - about 60 million Americans - say that the internet has played an important role in helping them deal with at least one major life decision in the last two years, a 33% increase from a similar survey in early 2002.

The full report at can be obtained at the Pew Site.

SNA makes it Big Time Twice in Business Week

Blogs made it big in Business Week last fall. Now the time has come for a turn for social networking analysis (SNA). In the article, The Office Chart That Really Counts: Mapping informal relationships at a company is revealing -- and useful, Jena McGregor covers the space. My good friend Kate Ehrlich, at IBM, is interviewed along with a number of others.

Bruce Hoppe comments on the article in The Office Chart That Really Counts (Business Week). Bruce links to a prior post of his that Kate contributed to, Even with Web 2.0, we still occasionally need to meet face-to-face. The title is self-explanatory and one that I agree with with.

Bruce also links to a second Business Week article on SNA that is an interview of Kate, “IBM: Untangling Office Connections: Researcher Kate Ehrlich says companies can streamline innovation and collaboration through social-network analysis.” In this interview she offers some very practical advice on SNA and its value. If you make things visible then they become actionable. SNA helps with making things visible.

I only caution that this does not mean that the analysis is always right but at least there is a starting point for discussion. Treat these network maps as symptoms that need to be confirmed by other means. Like a lot of tools that rely on group behavior, there are many ways that SNA might be manipulated but at least it tells you where to look.

SNA is not without its critics. In the spirit of equal time, here is a post by Noel Guinane, Social Network Analysis, that points out some of the potential weaknesses of SNA. There is a long section of comments by many people that I know and respect. Some are interesting point and counterpoint. I agree with the person who said that any system can be gamed, especialy those that rely on group participation. I see this all the time and that motivated my caution above to treat SNA results as symptoms.

Noel writes in response to one of the comments, "My objection to SNA as it is at the moment is that it contains within it too much potential for gaming the system, encouraging people to ingratiate themselves socially with the hubs and in so doing, turn themselves into hubs without necessarily having anything to offer the company. This is how politics works, not business."

This is true but it is also true for Google, Amazon, del.icio.uc, Digg, and most web 2,0 tools. But this does mean that they should not be used.

I have seen the politics Noel describes happen many times before SNA was ever created. SNA is not necessary to motivate this behavior nor should it be blamed for it. SNA might document it but then the hubs need to be evaluated for what they really contribute to the business and not simply to their own self promotion. Going back to Kate's point, it makes things visible and then they can become actionable. They action requires some intelligence as SNA does not perscribe the action, only the symptom.

Networks for Newbies - Barry Wellman

Here is a good chance to get an excellent introduction to social networks. Barry Wellman, Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto and NetLab Director, gives a half-day workshop, Networks for Newbies, every year at the Sunbelt Network conference. As Barry says, it “is totally non-technical, but emphasizes concepts, lore.” The slides for his Networks for Newbies session are available at his site under the Publications section under social network methods.

He was teaching at the University of Toronto when I was there obtaining my doctorate in educational psychology. It did take a course in his department on participant observation but it was with one his colleagues.

It did find a number of other interesting articles that you can download for free which serve as introductions to the field. I am quoting below the description on the site.

"The Global Village: Internet and Community" (Barry Wellman). Idea&s – “The Arts & Science Review, University of Toronto, 1(1): 26-30. Magazine article for the general reader about NetLab's research into the internet in everyday life, especially their local and long-distance communities.”

Connecting Community: On and Offline – Barry Wellman – “The Internet is no longer a separate world for the in-group millions of people routinely come online. Rather than isolating users in a virtual world, the Internet extends community in the real world, and connects people through individualized and flexible social networks rather than fixed and grounded groups. The article gives examples from NetLab's research.”

Are We Limited to 150 “Close” Relationships?

Here is an interesting article by two British scientist, R.A. Hill, and R.I.M. Dunbar. "Social network size in humans.” It was published in Human Nature 2003, 14:53-72. They looked at social networking in Western society through Christmas card exchange. They were following up on some neurological work that implied the human brain, because of the cortex size, might limit us to the ability to actively handle about 150 close relationships at any one time. The authors claimed that their work supported this contention.

They found that each household sent out an average of 68 cards to an average of 153 people (as some cards went to more than one person). I may be missing something here but to me it just means that white Brits (the sample) send out a lot of Christmas cards. It takes a great leap of faith to imply that this cultural act correlates with the closeness of recipients. There are probably many differing criteria for sending out cards. I am always amazed at some of the cards I get. Based on my own experience, I would not correlate degree of closeness with probability of receiving a card from someone. If anything, there may be a negative correlation with the exception of my relatives.

I wonder what other experimental situations can be mined here. Perhaps your email address list? What about your blog roll? But there are many reasons people get on each of these lists. I recently got a Linked In request from some guy who called himself “I am your linkedin daddy” with over 6,000 “close” connections. I wonder how big is his cortex? I declined but it appears that he got a lot of people who will accept any invitation to be connected. Perhaps he wants to sent up a “match.com” type service for linkedin junkies.

How many active relationships can you manage at one time? Intuitively I think the number 150 is perhaps right but I would not base this on Christmas Card behavior. Of course, this means you have to find 150 people who want to be connected to you.

Thanks to Valdis Krebs for sharing the link to this work.

Connectedness – The Newsletter

Bruce Hoppe of Connective Associates writes the blog, Connectedness. He also publishes a newsletter by the same name. Bruce runs classes on Social Network Analysis (SNA). As Bruce writes, “Connectedness is a monthly newsletter about improving business with a network perspective. It covers ways to increase productivity, improve leadership, accelerate innovation, create value with key customers, and connect HR to corporate strategy. If you already read the blog Connectedness, think of this newsletter as an executive summary.”

Bruce is very knowledgeable on SNA and both the blog and newsletter make for good reading on the topic. The October issue of the newsletter looks “how the network perspective can tap our visual sense to create a powerful story about how each individual contributes to the success of an organization.” You can subscribe by going to his Connective Associates site.

The Virtual Handshake Blog – Scott Allen and David Teton

Scott Allen was one of my co-author, Amanda Watlington’s co-presenters at the recent Dallas KM Cluster. Scott is the co-author with David Teten of the Virtual Handshake, the topic he covered in Dallas. They also have a blog by the same name. The goal of the blog and the book “is to create the leading resource guide for users of social software: blogs, social networking sites, virtual communities, relationship capital management software, contact management software, and so on." They define social software as “a general term for websites and software tools which help you to discover, extend, manage, enable communication in, and/or leverage your social network.” Scott and David also write a monthly column for Fast Company.com on the subject.

There are posts on using blogs to find a job, successful email communication, small business online matchmaking, and other related topics. They also offer a wiki for a directory of network and social software companies, good use of this additive tool.

More on Economic Sociology

Brayden posted a useful comment to today’s piece on economic sociology. I followed the link and found an interesting blog, Pub Sociology, and a post on the Globe article that offers more, another example of the usefulness of comments and trackbacks to expand on an issue.

Economic Sociology – Another Venue for Network Analysis

There was an interesting article in the Boston Globe last weekend in the Ideas Section. Virginia Postrel wrote a piece, Market Share, on how a growing number of sociologists are starting to study core economic issues. Vivina Zeilzer, a Princeton sociologist is quoted as saying, “The economy is social. It’s a set of social relations.” She and others argue that the marketplace cannot be viewed separately from the social relations that fuel it. It is nice of academic sociology to notice this also.

Picking up from Mark Granovetter, the author points out how weak ties, those seemingly tangential relations we possess, are actually more effective in introducing us to new ideas and finding us a job, for example. Your close ties know you too well and tend to travel in the same circles so they are less likely to open new connections. This has been my personal experience ever since I was ten and got my first job through a weak tie. All subsequent employment has come through some type of social relationship, weak or strong.

As I mentioned yesterday, Patti Anklam's new 100 page report, The Social Network Toolkit published by the Ark Group gives a useful overview of the field of social network analysis form a business perspective. The rise of social networks is being studied by many disciplines. In many of these instances, the substance of the research is more defining that the discipline of departure. In part this advance in social relation research been fueled by the advent of new analytical tools such as Peter Gloor’s, TekFlo, and many others.

In parallel, the creation of more social relations through weak ties has been supported and enhanced by the new, more open, communication tools, such as blogs that promote the creation and maintenance of new weak ties. It was the expanding network of people that I met through my blog that provided many of the cases for our business blog guide. This community of weak ties is one of the major benefits of business blogs as these ties are more likely to become customers and business partners.

The Social Network Toolkit – Patti Anklam

Knowledge is power. But where does knowledge come from? Patti Anklam looks at the role of social networks in generating and transferring knowledge in her new 100 page report, The Social Network Toolkit published by the Ark Group. She starts by providing some convincing evidence that most knowledge comes form people and those with strong social networks have access to the most knowledge and thus have the most power. This certainly resonates with my experience.

Patti quotes one study that found that 85% of people found business knowledge from other people and only 15% from systems. Those 15% were newcomers who had yet developed their networks. Yet, most organization flip their investments in the opposite direction, over investing in systems that do not get properly used and under investing in promoting the networks where real knowledge is transferred.

The book is organized around answering these questions:

What are the recent rends that have further elevated the importance of social networks?

Why should manages care about social networks?

What do they need to know about social networks and what practices best support their growth and development?

What tools are available to enable social networks?

How can you successfully integrate social network management into an organization to align with its business practices and gain maximum business value?

There is a lot of great substantive content here. I have been looking at this issue for some time but learned a lot from reading her report. I liked her chart on the three stages of KM. First there was a focus on putting knowledge in to documents to make it explicit. Then, the focus shifted to supporting the sharing of tacit knowledge. Now, with the focus of social networks, there is a shift to emergent knowledge. This third stage is where organizations need to be to remain competitive today.

Here are some more details about ordering the Social Network Toolkit from her blog. Patti also teaches workshops on the topic. Her next Master Class will be in Chicago, October 6-7.

Annotated Bibliography of Social Network Analysis for Business – Patti Anklam and Bruce Hoppe

Patti Anklam and Bruce Hoppe put together a comprehensive bibliography on social network analysis for business and Bruce offers it on his blog with active links. This is avery useful project and is appreciated. It has the following topics:

- Social and personal networks in organizations
- Communities of practice
- Networks, business, and knowledge management
- Organizational networks research
- The science of networks
- SNA textbooks
- Brief readings and articles
- Websites and blogs

It is a useful list and I would add Peter Gloor’s new book, Swarm Creativity, about collaborative innovative networks.

Cannie Cliques – Wired

Valdis Krebs shared this story about the latest in social networking analysis, a revolutionary new breakthrough from MIT’s Physical Language Workshop. As Wired relates in Cannie Cliques, “The Social Networking in Fur, or SNIF, project is a wearable computer system for dogs that allows their owners to monitor the animals' behavior and capture their social networks.” The information from a collar is uploaded to a leash and then on to a server where dog owners can see who sniffed who and what their owners are like. Are cats next?

The Social Network Analysis of Rock Bands

No, this is not an April Fool’s joke or is it? There is actually a web site (not blog), Band to Band, that allows you to map the connections between rock bands. I dare you to try the link. You pick two bands and they will let you know who from one band played in another that included someone who played in another, etc. until the link is made. Fo example, it took eleven steps (bands) to connect T Rex and U2 but i ttook 14 steps to connect the British rock group, Queen, with Flatt & Scruggs, the country and western band. Think of the work to put this together. I am sure Freddy Mercury and Curly Seckler would have been grateful to know the connections.

Then, if click on a album you can see all the band members and what other albums they worked on, creating connections outside their core group.

Thanks to Ph. D. student in Human Ecology at Lund University in Sweden for pointing this out. I would give him credit but not sure his doctoral committee would want to know how he spends is time.

I should add that finding connections is more common that it seems and we all have many relationships. As a disclaimer on the post below on Thoreau's blog, I am a distant cousin of Henry through my great grandmother, a Dunbar, from Maine. Henry visted his Dunbar cousins when he went there. However, I have no known relationship to any of the above bands.

What Makes Good Technology for Social Networking Applications? – Cesar Brea

Cesar Brea was one of the panel participants at the January New England KM Cluster. His panel covered the role of technology in social networking. Cesar is the former head of Contact Network Corporation, an enterprise social networking software startup and now is a consultant and on the Executive Board of .LRN, an open source learning platform that includes blogs. I asked him to summarize what makes good technology for social networking applications. He replied with a good summary which is repeated in a recent post on his blog. I want to provide the main points below but also encourage you to go to his blog as Cesar has some nice long essays on industry issues. He is also a case in our blog book.

To answer this, Cesar said the logical thing is to ask first, "What makes a good social networking application?"

”In summary, you have to have something valuable to exchange, and not lose it in a thicket of other junk. Second, you have to group users into tight "affinity groups" within which they are likely to share. Finally, third, you have to make both contributing and consuming information really easy.”

So then you ask yourself the following questions about technology:

1. at what cost can I modify it to focus the feature set only on the one or two things that are most valuable to exchange?

2. does its scheme for defining and managing groups and permissions support the affinity group structure I think will maximize sharing?

3. at what cost can I modify it to support the simplest possible structured contribution and consumption of what's shared?

Generally speaking, the first and third of these are easy if you're custom-building a web app. Any good package should also make them easy.

The second is hard. The right way to do it is with abstractions that support inheritance of group properties and permissions. But abstractions can be seriously slow if not done well. (Getting this right is part of what makes OpenACS/.LRN really special.)”

Visible Path has a Blog, Centrality

The social network application company, Visible Path, recently started a blog, Centrality. It looks at the “business value and underlying science of relationship capital.” The brought in some big time bloggers to help. Stowe Boyd, who is the COO at Corante, is the editor. He also brought in another Corante blogger, Suw Charman. Two Visible Path people, Anthony Brydon and Stanley Wasserman, also contribute. It should be good.

Social Networking in Economic Development – Valdis Krebs

Valdis Krebs shared this article, Building Sustainable Communities Through Network Building, about social networking in economic development. It was written for a non-academic audience and summarizes the work of ACEnet -- the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks in Athens, Ohio. June Holley of ACEnet and Valdis have been mapping the entrepreneurial networks in SE Ohio since 1998. The article was published in the Non-Profit Quarterly, Spring 2004, Volume 11, Issue 1.

The article is a nice intro to social networking analysis by one of the masters. There are many other articles on his site. Orgnet.com

Social Capital in Mongolia (and New Hampshire) – Catherine Johnson (and Ken Leslie)

Catherine Johnson looked at the information seeking behavior of residents of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. See "Choosing people: The role of social capital in information seeking behaviour," Information Research, Vol 10, no. 1. As my daughter, Katie Ives, was in rural Mongolia in the Peace Corps, I am always interested in stuff form there.

Catherine Johnson recently shared this summary of the work in an email group. She found that social capital had a significant effect on whether people chose to consult other people, organizations (including libraries, health or government offices) or media sources to help resolve their information problems. People with better social capital consulted other people or organizations, while those with poorer social capital chose media sources (newspapers, television, radio and some Internet). The media sources, that also do not have any human help aspect, were the least useful source of information. She also found that when people chose other people in their search for new information they tended to choose their weak ties over more strongly connected members of their social networks.

Ken Leslie found a similar situation a he developed the uvScene, a blog designed to build community in the Upper Valley area on the New Hampshire and Vermont border around Dartmouth College. Ken has enlisted a group of others to help with this blog that covers community and social events. They make extensive use of pictures. Underlying Ken’s work is the belief in the value of increasing social capital for increasing community health. Ken has found that the many connections that are developing in this community enrich everyone and extend the possibilities for mutual support. For example, Ken says that he does not need a formal road side assistance program for his car like AAA in case it breaks down because he now has so many friends he can call on for help.

Blogs can be one way to build social capital in a community and create the useful weak ties that provide context for information searches. I am more likley to trust a local blog than a local guide on stuff to do in an area if I have developed a sense of trust in the blogger's knowledge.

TekFlo - Visualizing Time in Social Networks

Peter Gloor, MIT Center for Coordination Science, and Yan Zhao, Dartmouth Center for Digital Strategies, present an interesting paper on Visualizing Time in Social Networks that introduces their application, TekFlo. The name, TekFlo, stands for a Temporal Communication Flow Visualizer for Social Network Analysis. It automatically generates movies of electronic communication flows. Peter and Yan have applied it to email, blog links, and links between sites that show up in Google searches on a specific search topic. In addition to the movies, they have developed several other interaction measures such as a contribution index which measures the activity of individuals as senders and receivers of email or links and an index that measures the degree to which communication patterns are democratic and balanced or hierarchical in nature.

The paper provides some examples of cases where it was applied to email traffic. By combining these results with a contextual understanding of what was going on, the authors can look at patterns that illustrate functional and dysfunctional communication patterns. This view provides the ability to look for the effectiveness of ongoing communication patterns. Are the key players being left out? Is the wrong person serving as the communication hub? Are there side pockets of communication that are isolated from the other stakeholders? This knowledge can lead to interventions to correct dysfunctional behavior.

The ability to look email traffic and blog links on a temporal basis can provide an understanding of the interaction of these two communication media. Adding the links between sites that show up in Google searches adds a further dimension for this cross-channel analysis.

Possible questions to examine include: How does the implementation of blogs within the enterprise effect email traffic?

Are blogs uncovering new sources of expertise outside current email communication?

How does the implementation of customer focused blogs affect emails from customers?

How do blog posts affect traffic to your site and your relationships to other sites?

Are your blog posts and your web site complementing each other?

The tool is available for free down load at the MIT CCS ICKN site.

Content and Structure in Social Network Analysis - Frans Stokman

Here is Frans Stokman’s keynote at the 2004 SUNBELT conference, What Binds Us When With Whom? Content and Structure in Social Network. In it he argues that “we need to give more attention to questions which relationships matter in which contexts and which structural characteristics create opportunities in which contexts and in which not.”

Frans Stokman is a Professor of Social Science Research Methodology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. A list of many of Stokman’s work that provides links is also available.

Sunbelt - Social Network Analysis

For SNA people here is the preliminary program for the 25th annual Sunbelt Social Network Analysis meeting in Redondo Beach CA February 16-20, 2005. This is one of the premier SNA events.

Enterprise Social Network Analysis – Valdis Krebs

Valdis Krebs is giving a one day workshop on enterprise social network analysis on January 20 in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the IBM facility at 1 Rogers Street. I have heard him speak last spring in NYC and it was one of my first introductions to the topic. It remains one of the best I heard.

As the event description says, “Enterprise Social Network Analysis is used to effectively map and measure networks, knowledge flows and relationships in organizations, communities and other complex human systems. These practical methods are highly instrumental in building and optimizing the dynamic knowledge ecosystems essential to productivity, innovation and the future of all knowledge-based organizations.”

This is one day before our KM Cluster looking at social networking from an individuals’ perspective. We will be at the same facility so the combined effort makes a nice two event on the topic. We have spent a good bit of time planning this so it will be very interactive and help us all come to some new conclusions on the topic

Where in the World are Your Friends? – Plazes.com

It is 3 AM and you want to know where your friends are right now? Thanks to Gregor Rothfuss of the Apache Software Foundation for pointing me to Plazes.com. It is free and describes itself as “the first global location-aware interaction and geo-information system, connecting you with the people and Plazes in your area and all over the world. It is the navigation system for your social life.”

You can locate hot spots for WiFi, people with similar interests, friends, or other people and places through a nice UI that features maps with locations. They also have a blog.

The Nature of Trust – Georg Simmel

I have been looking at bit at the work of Georg Simmel, a German sociologist I read in my student days. Guido Mollering provides a comprehensive article on his work on trust. Georg saw the development of trust as a mental process that has three components: expectation, interpretation, suspension. As Guido writes:

“Expectation is the state (outcome) at the end of the process. It is preceded by the combination of interpretation and suspension. The former concerns the experiencing of reality that provides ‘good reason’” … Suspension is “the mechanism of bracketing the unknowable, thus making interpretative knowledge momentarily certain. Suspension enables the leap of trust.”

Collaboration requires a bit of trust, as does participation in the blogosphere. We have an expectation of benefit from our efforts. This expectation takes many forms and it is best that the expectations of the participants align, but it is not necessary, or even desirable that they are identical, just complimentary. Then we interpret our communication through the lens of our expectations. The first two components are necessary, but not sufficient. Suspension enables us to bridge the gaps and, through it, achieve trust.

Intellectual Property Survey: Social Networking Technologies

KM Cluster has recently announced the release of their Intellectual Property Survey devoted to Social Networking Technologies. The survey covers intellectual property and patents held by a large number of firms in this space and intellectual property associated with the Microsoft and IBM social computing groups, as well as a review of issues relevant to the world of social networks. Here is a link to more details.

Visualizing Social Networks – Bruce Hoppe

Bruce Hoppe provides a link to an interesting article by Cathleen McGrath (College of Business Administration, Loyola Marymount University) and Jim Blythe (Information Sciences Institute, USC) on the effect of visualization methods in analyzing social networks.

The abstract states: “In this study, we explore the combined effects of layout and motion on viewers' perceptions of social network data. We ask viewers to interpret the overall network and we ask domain specific questions about managing change within a departmental team to understand how network display influences viewers' overall perception of networks. We find that motion has a positive effect on the accuracy of viewers' perceptions of change in status from formal to informal networks. We also find no main effect for hierarchical versus spatially central layout on viewers' accuracy. There is a significant interaction effect of motion and graph layout on viewers perception of change. Finally, we find that when viewers are asked to make interpretations of the overall graph, they bring their own pre-existing graphical vocabulary that may influence their interpretation.”

Bruce adds: “I am struck that not only does the layout heavily influence perception of the organization, but also some observers are biased to prefer formal hierarchy and others not, when asked the same question (ability to change).”

I certainly agree with the positive effect that motion provides having seen Peter Gloor’s CKN tool in operation. It is nice to now see some research that supports this perception.

It seems that we can all do it if we want to.

Bruce Hoppe in his post, Personality and Propensity to Brokerage, discusses the relationship of networking capability and personality. He finds that most researchers suggest that there is little correlation between the ability to network and specific personality types.

I certainly agree with Bruce and the researchers he cites, Burt along with Cross and Parker. Of course, with apology to psychometrics people, I have generally thought that personality types from personality tests have only slightly more predictive power that astrology signs and about the same level of potential for self-fulfilling prophecy. I have never learned my Meyers Briggs type – perhaps there is a type for those who don’t.

i-neighbors - Connecting Your Neighborhood

Continuing to review my RSS feed from Bruce Hoppe I found a link to a very interesting tool – i-neighbors. As the site says, “I-neighbors is a FREE online community that connects people to neighbors in their local community. Unlike other websites that allow global, national, or city-wide communication, I-Neighbors links members of a single neighborhood, defined by the people that create them. I-neighbors was created by a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). These services were designed to encourage neighborhood participation and to help people form local social ties.”

I joined my neighborhood (or actually the closest one) and found reviews of local businesses, people to connect with, the opportunity to initiate and/or participate in polls on the neighbors, the ability to print out a flyer to give the neighbors, photos – with ability to add my own, upcoming events and more. My neighborhood is still very much under development and it will be interesting to see how this evolves. Go find the set-up for your neighborhood or start one for it

Multiples of One

Thanks to Kate Ehrlich for telling me about the Multiples of One conference held last November at MIT. It brought “together leaders in design, organizational strategy, technology and law to examine the critical issues facing organizations as they transform into powerful networks of people. The conference is unique in addressing these issues from the perspective of the individual in the network; through the lens of product development, workplace design, and, social and technological regulation. Networks are about people interacting -- Multiples of One. “

It was designed to “spark conversations round these topics in three thought provoking sessions, NODES (the individual and product development), PODS (the individual in the workplace) and POOLS (the individual in society).”

Continuing on it further describes these three components:

N O D E S considers how devices and new technologies can amplify the individual voice to be effective in designing future products and services. In this session we ask, 'Can an individual working alone truly influence new products? And if so, how does the individual affect innovation?'

P O D S looks at how individuals shape their physical and organizational environment to encourage creativity. In this session we ask, 'What makes a productive workplace? What new ways can companies organize to create value? How can individuals actively create collaborative environments?'

P O O L S takes us into the world at large to examine how individual behavior responds to existing social and government policies. What is the responsibility of the individual in defining the new frontiers of regulation? In this session we ask, 'If broadcast spectrum is allocated on a democratic model will this make traditional broadcasting unconstitutional?'

Microsoft Research’s Social Computing Group

Thanks to John Maloney for pointing me to a very interesting set of projects that Microsoft is working on. The group’s mission is “to research and develop software that contributes to compelling and effective social interactions, with a focus on user-centered design processes and rapid prototyping. Our work includes the Sapphire project, sharing, mobile applications, trust and reputation, collaboration, and story telling. To facilitate the rapid prototyping, we also have an online lab for running studies to evaluate our social user interfaces.” Here are a few of their projects.

Wallop allows you to share photos, blog, and interact with friends. Wallop is a research project that explores how people share media and build conversations in the context of social networks. Microsoft is conducting a small, real world trial of Wallop with small friendship groups so only those in the group can use it now.

Sapphire as the site says: “We model the user experience after the way people (vs computers) think, feel, organize and remember. This simple but fundamental change in perspective has caused us to rethink the way the system is experienced and designed, from the user experience to the lowest levels of the system. The current desktop assumes you organize files by manually sorting into folders. As the amount of information increases, finding items becomes more frustrating. Our goal is to have automatic, dynamic grouping by association replace folders as the primary means of organizing.”

There is a social networking tool they call Personal Map. As the site relates, “The goal of the Personal Map is to help users organize their email contacts in a meaningful way, based on their email behavior, without users having to provide any additional information. The Personal Map models the users social network (who they care about and their informal groups) based on communication behavior such who they email the most and who they email together.” They have integrated it with Outlook.

I especially liked Photo Story and can think of many personal uses for it. The site describes as follows: “Recent advances in technology have combined to make the production, archiving, and storage of digital photos possible, yet most software fails to address the principle reason that people share photos in the first place: to tell personal stories. A key goal of Photostory is to allow novice end-users to quickly and easily share photo-based stories with people in a way that is simpler and more emotionally compelling than a static slide show with text.”

There are many more, including a peer-based reputation system that they claim can reduce on-line bad behavior as well as welcome make introductions. There is also a project that borrows a name from Lotus, Raven, to look into Groove’s space. “Raven simplifies the building of multi-user applications letting two client-side webpages talk to one another (peer-to-peer) without a server involved.”

A number of research papers are listed and some are available for download, including

Kelly, S., Sung, C., & Farnham S. (2002). Designing for Improved Social Responsibility and Content in On-Line Communities. In Proceedings of CHI 2002, Minneapolis, April 2002.

Davis, J., Farnham, S., Jensen, C. (2002). Decreasing Online Bad Behavior. In Extended Abstracts of CHI 2002, Minneapolis, April 2002.

There are many more that are available. I wonder how many of these projects will become commercial. It would think that a number of niche vendors would be concerned.

iQuest – Searching Human Capital

Josh Rosenthal, a former colleague, recently started Leading Indicator Advisory Partners to provide methodologies, analytics and technologies to help organizations measure — and manage — their human capital and the supporting systems and processes. A major component of their services is iQuest™, a hosted application that paints a detailed picture of a company's people, their capabilities and their potential.

It provides an organization with the information necessary to develop a comprehensive human capital strategy. To support this effort, iQuest™ does extensive data mining to identify gaps in skills, understanding and performance in key areas and map the path to close those gaps. iQuest™ contains a proprietary knowledge base and architecture driven by its Contextual Analysis Engine™ and its own approach to data analysis and solutions implementation. It is designed to be a comprehensive search engine for human capital.

iQuest™ measures current performance across the enterprise in the following areas:

• Organization strategy
• Organization performance
• Management and employee competencies
• Marketing and distribution information systems and structures
• Critical information access, analysis and integration
• Internal communications

I have seen sample reports and was very impressed. For example, trend analysis is available that plots management perception of enterprise performance across a series of dimensions such as customer strategy, operational alignment, and actionable communication. An operational impact report identifies performance gaps segments by functional groups. You can see the relative importance and performance on critical skill areas and whether there are gaps.

A skill requirement report calls out management and organizational competencies that may be required to fill identified performance gaps. It looks at the match between the current skills of managers and the requirements of their roles to execute the business strategy. You can also see the degree to which management’s business strategies are aligned with individual job performance through the personal impact report.

It would be interesting to use this tool in consort with some of the social networking analysis tools such as CKN to look for convergence in findings. iQuest looking at performance and CKN looking at how the performers interact.