Graph of LiveJournal

My Corante Web Hub colleague, Matt Hurst, is very interested in mapping networks with a bunch of his maps on his blog, Data Minding.  He also finds interesting work elsewhere, such as this beautiful one, Analytical Graph Layout

Eytan Adar (veteran social media grapher) pointed me to this paper (Lehmann and Kottler) on graph layout which contains an interesting example in the form of LiveJournal data.

Social Network Theory put to the Test: University of Pennsylvania Computer Scientists | Technology News Daily

Technology News Daily describes work done at my PhD alma mater: Social Network Theory put to the Test: University of Pennsylvania Computer Scientists:

Ever since 1969, when psychologists Jeffery Travers and Stanley Milgram first explained that everyone was separated by only six connections from anyone else, researchers have created theoretical models of the networks that societies create. Now, computer scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science have devised an ingenious experiment to put such theories to the test.

The findings, which appear today in the journal Science, have implications for many forms of social interaction, from disaster management to how many friends connect to your MySpace page. The Penn researchers have found that some of the simplest social networks function the most poorly and that information beyond a local view of the network can actually hinder the ability of some complicated social networks to accomplish tasks.

[linked by Emily Turrettini at Smart Mobs]

Innovation by Reorganization

Dinesh Tantri writes Breaking Social Networks Versus Building a Learning Organization

FastCompany has an article by Chris Trimble of the Tuck School Of Business about the impact of social networks on innovation . He says while existing social networks are a necessity in the idea generation phase of innovation, they need to be broken and re-created in the execution phase. Quoting from the article :

"Breaking networks is the only way to prepare an organization to take innovation efforts beyond mere ideas. You can train an individual about what an innovation is and why it demands different behavior, but you can't retrain an organization simply by training the individuals within it. The individuals may acquire knowledge, but organizations are more powerful than individuals, and organizations reinforce the past.

So often in my work chronicling innovation efforts, I've observed major turning points for the better following substantial reorganizations. Why? Reorganizations break those involved with an innovation out of their existing network, and force them to forge new relationships and new networks from scratch. "

I particularly like how Dinesh summarizes his own view on this article.

Reorganization, because organizations reinforce the past seems to be a quick fix - A classic case of addressing the symptom and ignoring the underlying problem. To build a debate culture, to surface assumptions as a group and challenge them, to question everything that is conventional wisdom would the key. And this is the training managers would need to ideate and execute innovation. Fundamental changes are tough but these are the long term capability building steps to be taken - IMHO, reorganizing for innovation might not be sustainable.

SNA for lost knowledge

Rob Cross has a piece at Visible Path on Knowledge Loss in Organizations that suggests the use of social network analysis to assist in the growing question of what to do as people leave jobs for retirement or simply in high-turnover industries.

Living SNA bibliography by Jonathon Cummings

Bruce Hoppe points to Living SNA bibliography by Jonathon Cummings, which is another nice bibliography of SNA practitioners.  This kind of effort is why we at MeshForum decided to take down our "experts" section which was becoming difficult to maintain.  (It also made it sound like those people were attending the conference, which had the potential for misleading people.)

Jonathon Cummings, professor of management at Duke University, has assembled a nice academic bibliography on social network analysis, which includes a form at the bottom so that anyone can add new entries. He also maintains a comprehensive list of network visualization software.

Another SNA primer

Andrew Rixon of Anecdote gives us A quick primer on Social Network Analysis

Given that I’m right in the middle of a social network analysis, I thought I’d throw together a very quick, very brief primer on Social Network Analysis.

What is Social Network Analysis? A social network is a map of the relationships between individuals, the analysis involves a study of these relationships.

How do you do a Social Network Analysis?

And presents five steps to the analysis.  I like his emphasis on working with the decision makers on the analysis, rather than simply writing up a report.

Personal network archeology

Bruce Hoppe writes The "Steinway" of networking strategies

I consolidated my rolodex last weekend in anticipation of sending holiday cards. As I was double-checking contact information, I reflected on how I originally met each person in my life. Did I meet them randomly, as part of a group, or perhaps through a specific introduction?

Check out the network drawing he made.

I heard a very similar comment at a conference recently.  The person had dug through their client list attempting to figure out how the contact with the client was established.  He figured he had five or six sources.

Danah Boyd on Friendster

Danah Boyd has published a collection of herFriendster publications on Many-to-Many:.

These are all well worth reading and looking over as they represent a collection of serious studies over multiple years of one of the larger of the social networks.

Tremor using SNA for Marketing

elearnspace: Social Networks

Two things have consumed my attention over the last few years: how we learn and how knowledge flows in networks. Social network analysis (SNA)- an extremely simple, but powerful idea - is one of the best ways we can currently measure how knowledge flows in certain groups (though we haven't yet applied this to learning). Tremor uses an interesting application of SNA for marketing. Situated cognition (or other terms reflective of being able to understand based on context) is giving way to network cognition - the notion that our understanding is more a function of a network than our current context.

Survey of SNA resources

Colabria gives us a nice survey of the field. Social Networks

Relationships and Network Theory
Social Networks are 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.

Connectedness newsletter

Bruce Hoppe of the Connectedness blog has a business, focused on using the x-ray of social networks to improve business. We've also referenced his items here a number of times.

He is also now collecting highlights of his blog entries into a regular newsletter for people who are not regular blog readers, or who want executive summaries.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Connectedness, a newsletter about improving business with a network perspective. This month's featured topic is accelerating innovation. Future issues will consider other critical business applications of the network perspective such as increasing productivity, improving leadership, creating value with key customers, and connecting HR to corporate strategy. If you already read my blog Connectedness, think of this newsletter as an executive summary.

Pollard on SNA: What to Map

Dave Pollard talks about Social Network Analysis: What to Map after reading Cross and Parker's The Hidden Power of Social Networks.  He also refers to our friend, Valdis Krebs.

What could you do with this information? Imagine you could recast the SNA map at the top of this article with a second map that showed the perceived quality of information transfer (each way) between you and others in your network, and a third map that showed the perceived degree of trust (each way) between you and others in your network? If the perceptions each way, or between the three maps, were markedly different, this could be startling and potentially very useful knowledge. Unlike the authors of The Hidden Power of Social Networks, however, I think in the hands of management it would be dangerous, disruptive, and perhaps even abusive. But suppose the perceptions of you by others (how 'well' you do in each of the 16 qualitative attributes above) was available exclusively and privately to you? This, I believe, could be astonishingly valuable as a self-assessment tool. 

Social Network Analysis at BHP

Eric van Bekkup at the efios blog writes Social Network Analysis at BHP

There are very few papers on the usage of SNA for knowledge networking in the mining / industrial minerals industry. Some (undocumented) work has been done with Borax, but the most obvious one is a 2000 report from Laurence Lock Lee. In his paper, "Knowledge Sharing Metrics for Large Organisations" which can be downloaded here he provides some insight in the structure and creation of the BHP GMN (Global Maintenance Network), founded back in 1997.The Global Maintenance Network is formalized, and very much structured (facilitated, too), and according to the paper not a community of practice, which is largely unstructured.

Social networks of jerks and fools

Bruce Hoppe comments on the recent HBR article, "Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools, and the Creation of Social Networks," by Tiziana Casciaro and Miguel Sousa Lobo. Bruce's comments: Social networks of jerks and fools

Suppose you need help completing a project at work. You can ask Alice, who is professionally expert but personally prickly; or you can ask Brenda, who is very likable but doesn't know much that can help you. When faced with that hypothetical question, most people choose the competence of Alice over the likability of Brenda. Did you choose similarly?

Researchers have found that the real story is more complicated. When faced with a real-life choice, most people ignore their stated preference for competence and actually choose likability first.

Update: fixed link to Casciaro

IBM on SNA

Kate Ehrlich and Inga Carboni have an article on SNA from IBM Think Research, It's Who You Know: Inside Social Network Analysis

Social Network Analysis is a set of survey methods and statistics that reveals the hidden connections between people. The outcome of an SNA shows where collaboration is breaking down, where talent and expertise could be better used, where decisions are getting bogged down or where opportunities for innovation are being lost. The data give leaders the information they need to take actions: perhaps including making role and responsibility changes that would foster cross-group communications; developing methods for improving trust; using technology to reach others more effectively; or realigning reward and incentive programs.

[via elearnspace]

Five reasons social networking doesn't work

Five reasons social networking doesn't work, Molly Wood, The Buzz Report, CNet, 2 June 2005

1. There's nothing to do there
2. It takes too much time
3. Traffic alone isn't enough
4. Strangers kind of suck (or, put nicely, the social hierarchy is really not that attractive)
5. We already have the Internet

Music network analysis

Visible Path post on Music Network Analysis

A number of people have been studying music, composers and collaborators and tunes, using network analysis.

One typical study focuses on who records together (there have been some really interesting analyses of the jazz world, from the 1920's through the 1970's). Another typical study focuses on who records what theme, or tune, or, as it is known in the reggae world, rhythm.

With a link to Six Degrees of Raggae Riddims, an excellent SNA of the raggae world.

Who knows whom, and who knows what?

CIO Magazine's Susannah Patton has a piece on social network analysis in the June 15, 2005 edition: Who Knows Whom, And Who Knows What? Valdis Krebs is quoted.

Employees' personal connections can be as valuable as their individual knowledge base. Social network analysis, or SNA, helps maximize a company's collective smarts.

iSociety report on Social Capital and Software

The Work Foundation - iSociety has issued a report written by William Davies and co-sponsored by Microsoft and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The report, available online as a PDF is a 68 page summary of social capital, social software, and the importance of understanding and using social networks.

Great reading for attendees of MeshForum.

Also of interest are the presentations also available on the website from the launch event for the report.

Visualization of Flicker Social Networks

GustavoG has recently posted a detailed analysis of the social network on FlickR.

To create this analysis he had to deal with a highly dense network, over 90,000 people from an initial seed of 1000 random FlickR users.

He describes his algorithm as:

what exactly is this "friend of a friend" approach?

It's an algorithm I made up today and I don't have a better name for it.
The network is too dense, too interconnected. I need to "trim it down" to be able to show something meaningful. So far, I had used a "mutual contacts" approach, i.e. if "A contacted B" and "B contacted A", the A-B relationship is mutual. If A has at least 50 such relations, it's included the mc-50 graph. This works fine, but I thought it might be obscuring some of the higher-order network structure.

In the "friend of a friend" approach, I first test every single contact relationship in the network, and decide whether to keep it or not. Let's say I'm testing the "A contacted B" link. To do this, I identify additional contacts in the form "A contacted C, and C contacted B". If I find at least 40 such "friend of a friend" links, I keep the "A contacted B" for the sc-40 graph. (The "sc" stands for "supported contact".) If not, the contact link is removed. After removing all such "unsupported" links, nodes not connected to anything else are removed from the graph.

Densely connected areas like the UAE cluster tend to remain largely unmodified. Rare links between such clusters tend to be dropped. This unravels the network into its better-connected components.

Social networks for newbies

elearnspace points to a useful presentation by Barry Wellman in Social Networks for Newbies:

A terrific introduction to social network analysis: Social Networks Analysis for Newbies (.ppt). On a side note, SNA is a new addition to most corporations. Elearning faced an interesting battle in finding its place most organizations - technology or training department. SNA will be similarily confused - is it a training concern? or knowledge management? IT? or strategic (i.e. a C-level activity)?

Update: fixed a broken link

SNA for users

Social Network Analysis for Users by Dr. Harald Katzmair is a collection of introductory material on SNA.

Social network analysis networks can be used to systematically map, analyse and utilize networks. But what exactly is social network analysis and how does it work? Why has the method proven to be particularly interesting and effective when it comes to efficient organization, communication and precise marketing?

[thanks to anu at scale|free]

MSBNC on Online Social Networks

MSNBC - Online social networks go to work

Article by Xeni Jardin (contributor to BoingBoing) on the role of online social networks in business, with a particular focus on how they have added value to some independent entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Most notable is that this discussion is moving from specialized technical websites to more mainstream websites.

Building your own network online

Interesting thoughts about how one should go about building their own network. Building a network online: where to start? is more of a conversation log, so there is no good quote. Suffice to say that David Wilcox runs through the common ways people think of expanding their networks, and he looks at some newer ideas.

Social networking technologies

From a widely distributed email, there is a new survey out that discusses IP and social networking technologies. It appears that the only way to get the survey is to attend the attached event.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RESEARCH: SOCIAL NETWORKING TECHNOLOGIES

Boston Patent Research is pleased to announce the upcoming release of its Intellectual Property Survey devoted to Social Networking Technologies. It covers recent and older patents and patent applications relevant to the field.

Social Networking technologies join friends, family members, coworkers and other social communities together. These technologies are convergent, emerging from a variety of applications such as search engines and employee evaluation routines while running on equally diverse platforms from server clusters to wireless phone networks. As such, social network platforms and the multi-sector markets from which they emerge present special challenges to engineers, market specialists and product development managers who wish to discern industry trends and isolate emerging technologies beneficial to their own business.

This research attempts to address these challenges through review of published patents and patent applications. Published patents lend the reader a view of the companies who may be in the best position to shape the market while published applications give the reader a view of the emerging market itself.

In addition, this research gives companies wishing to enter this market (or product development managers wishing to carve out a new niche) an important intellectual property resource, highlighting over 200 of the important patents that should be reviewed before a company commits time and resources to an endeavor in a highly competitive (and, judging from some of the market sectors—highly litigious) marketplace.

The research includes:

• A review of intellectual property held in over 120 companies in the social networking space (includes social network providers, dating companies and HR companies)


• A review of over 200 patents selected from a search-based pool of over 10,000 candidates — the review highlights a variety of patents highly relevant to one or more social networking sectors.


• A review of the intellectual property associated with the Microsoft and IBM social computing groups


• A review of litigation relevant to the world of social networking

The research will be made available on 25 June, 2004 at the NYC KM Cluster on Knowledge Leadership.

Questions regarding research specifics, price and availability should be addressed to John Boddie, owner of Boston Patent Research.

CIO: Encouraging Employee Socializing

CIO Magazine's June 1, 2004 issue has an article on Encouraging Employee Socializing by Edward Prewitt. It's a discussion and review of Rob Cross and Andrew Parker's upcoming The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations (Harvard Business School Press, June 2004).

Social networks on K@Wharton

Stowe Boyd and others have been interviewed in a Knowledge @ Wharton piece on social networking. Need a Job? How about a Date? Networking Services Want to Help

Networking services – Internet companies that offer to bridge the six degrees of separation between the friend of a friend we might marry, or the colleague of a colleague who might hire us – are the hot e-businesses of the moment.

Thesis on social software

Efios's blog recommends a thesis on social software.

Alicia L. Cervini has published on her website a thesis called "Network Connections: An Analysis of Social Software that Turns Online Introductions into Offline Interactions" which takes a look at the modern social software platforms. There is an extensive analysis in the capabilities of these platforms with a touch of social networking theory, but the conclusions are too little founded on the theory of social networking to make a lasting impression. Though it'll be outdated soon, if you are interested now in these platforms and their role in the SN world, check it out

IRS Announces WYSKster

tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog

Washington, DC (Rooters) - Capitalizing on the recent popularity of social networking applications, the Internal Revenue Service today announced its newest service, a social networking site at WhoYouShouldKnow.gov.

Related articles at Google.

a m b i t - networking media arts in Scotland

a m b i t - networking media arts in scotland

Analytic Technologies

Analytic Technologies -- Social Network Analysis & Cultural Domain Analysis, including the free NetDraw

SNA bibliography

A Working Bibliography on Social Network Analysis Methods from Robert Hanneman in Sociology at UC - Riverside. He has a draft available of a textbook on SNA (pdf).
[Updated Nov 2005 to fix some changed links.]

SOCNet ListServ

SOCNET ListServ

SOCNET is a LISTSERV list. A LISTSERV list is essentially an automated mail forwarding system in which subscribers send mail to a central address and it is automatically rebroadcast to all other subscribers. The purpose of SOCNET is to allow network researchers worldwide to discuss research and professional issues, make announcements, and request help from each other. Membership in SOCNET costs nothing and is available to all members of INSNA.

Ester Dyson on Mediamorphosis

EDventure :: from the Mediamorphosis conference on ....[about journalism]

Ester Dyson's take on the Mediamorphosis conference.

A few things stand out - one, the glimpses she gives into the work that goes into her own conference, PC Forum. Two, obliquely she refers to an exercise which involved a bit of roleplaying on the part of attendees, including luminaries such as Chuck D!

For us while planning MeshForum, blog entries such as this, as well as the many others on the web offer us the inside scoop on a wide range of conferences and events which we can model MeshForum upon, and from which we can learn many lessons.

For one, I think there is a great value for us in harnessing both the active, conferenc attending network of bloggers and deeply "plugged" in online pioneers, but we need to also pull in other networks of people to make MeshForum something memorable and meaningful.

At the moment, this means: Academic networks around the subject of Network Science; business networks of leaders from a wide range of industries dealing with Networks of one type or another (or more often, many different network issues; and non-corporate leaders also dealing with networks - politic organizers, non-profits, perhaps even religious group leaders.

I am encouraged, however, that there are many great conferences and that while the big "tradeshows" are and have been losing steam, targeted, focused conferences seem very vital and still meaningful today.

MediaMorphosis

About > The Advance - The Media Center @ API

A conference (currently running), which is very well covered online (it is about the media), one that we should look at as a possible model for MeshForum.

Doc Searls advice on Tradeshows

Doc Searls has written a great piece on tradeshows and how they can be improved (Linux for Suits: Showtime).

As we think about venues and whether or not to have an exhibit hall at MeshForum, I think his advice and this article is well worth reviewing and considering.

Social networking sites & software

An updatable list of Social Networking Sites and Software, originated by Cynthia Typaldos.

WiredReach

SNA platform: WiredReach, Inc.
[updated via comment]

ISNAE

ISNAE - Institute for Social Network Analysis

Distributed Social Software

Eric Gradman: Distributed Social Software (Seb Paquet). From USC computer science student Eric Gradman comes a paper titled “Distributed Social Software”. This is an ambitious, high-level description of how social software should really work in order to scale, preserve consistency, provide flexibility, and prevent fragmentation of the... [via Many-to-Many] via McGee's Musings

Mapping Social Networks

Found on BoingBoing: Detecting Patterns in Complex Social Networks

A great discussion about researchers at the University of Wisconsin who are working on techniques for detecting patterns in social networks. The author of this blog, as well as the researchers cited are exactly who MeshForum should be about!

Technoratisphere

Technoratisphere

How many social nets are too many

Judith Meskill reports How Many Social Nets Are Too Many? - The Social Software Weblog - socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com

[T]here are more than 100 social networking services that I have been observing — cruising past my virtual radar gun — in the past few months. I have been tracking this burgeoning growth of services aspiring to help discover and connect my friends, potential partners, business cohorts, and various levels of acquaintances — and I have this scary feeling that I am only carving shavings off of the tip of an iceberg with this list.