Portals and KM

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 valua