Keep the "I" really small then people won't give so much hassle about the "R"
Hard to argue with that !
November 2004 Archives
From Cory Linden, one of the creators of Second Life
Lada's work is on information flow in social groups, including tracking the prime movers in blogspace. As we think about the next versions of Second Life's reputation and social systems, I suspect we'll have to read up on much of her research. Tim is working on one of the Holy Grail's of computer science -- automated analysis of audio and video data to enable keyword and contextual searches. This is extremely exciting stuff, and when combined with podcasting and other RSS audio and video streams, takes personal broadcasting (and browsing) to a whole new level.
Which led me to Lada Adamic, a researcher at HP [formerly at Stanford where one of her collaborators and colleagues was Orkut Buyukkokten of Orkut fame]. She's doing a lot of research on social networks in the blogosphere, including some stuff that's getting closer to my heart: treating information spread as an epidemic and modelling it using tools and methods coming out of mathematical epidemiology:
Information Flow in Social Groups: We present a study of information flow that takes into account the observation that an item relevant to one person is more likely to be of interest to individuals in the same social circle than those outside of it. This is due to the fact that the similarity of node attributes in social networks decreases as a function of the graph distance. An epidemic model on a scale-free network with this property has a finite threshold, implying that the spread of information is limited. We tested our predictions by measuring the spread of messages in an organization and also by numerical experiments that take into consideration the organizational distance among individuals.
Lots more interesting stuff on her HP homepage:
- Implicit Structure and the Dynamics of Blogspace
- How to search a social network
- Enhancing Reputation Mechanisms via Online Social Networks (short paper)
- Information dynamics in a networked world
- Information flow in social groups
- Friends and Neighbors on the Web
- A Social Network Caught in the Web
Oh - and Second Life is a vast, fascinating and complex virtual space - I've recently started playing (in/with) it, and am amazed at the complexity and freedom it affords, and the communities that are forming in and around it. If you can shake off the stigma attached with MMO worlds [D&D hack'n'slay, geeky teenage boys] , Second Life is worth a detailed investigation.
Allan Engelhardt and Lee Bryant organised a Social Software in the Enterprise dinner with Ross Mayfield.
Lots of interesting people and lots of interesting conversations over a very nice meal at the Cantina del Ponte on the Thames. Didn't actually get to talk to Ross, but hey. Briefly chatted with Dave Green, had a lot of fun chatting with Ian (didn't get his last name) and David Smith, both of whom are teachers at Radley looking to do interesting things with blogs and wikis in the classroom. and chatted quite a bit with Livio Hughes, who, together with Lee "spare a cigarette guv'nor?" Bryant, founded Headshift. Seemed like another annoyingly smart, interesting and nice person. Also chatted to Lars (lost last name again) and Allan - seems like many of us are coming to the conclusion that we need to rename some of our tools / platforms...lots of agreement that the words "wiki" and "blog" don't come across well in the corporate environment. I'm already calling both "small scale content management", but I'm not sure that phrase accurately reflects blogs and wikis, and neither does it distinguish what are still quite separate applications.
Fun fun fun, and just what I needed to re-energise myself a little.
Information Diffusion though Blogspace [ David Gruhl, R. Guha, Liben-Nowell, and Andrew Tomkins, Proceedings of WWW'04] - found via Portals and KM, discusses how new ideas diffuse through the use of blogs. Haven't read it yet, but it's next on my list, and will also serve as a moment's pause for the memory of the father of information diffusion - Everett Rogers who passed away recently.
Another outcome of reading this paper [and getting more clued up on social networking principles and analysis, which as I'm starting to learn, requires understanding not just the maths, but the sociology behind it], is to refute stuff like this post from Jackie Danicki that I found via Johnnie Moore.
Seems to me like we've got non-quant people talking to non-quant people, lots of gnashing and wailing of teeth, and then a decision: "too hard, run away...no...reframe...metrics and ROI don't matter in this brave new world of blogs...anyone who thinks they do matter just doesn't get it". Sprinkle with lashings of references to The Cluetrain and "experts who should be listened too" [cf The Wisdom of Crowds...], and there you go.
I agree that this is really hard. Especially the ROI bit. However, I think measurement is essential, otherwise all you've got is a warm fuzzy story that may actually be completely incorrect. It's a little like the "New Economy" of the dot.com era, where profits didn't matter as long as you had a good story to tell. Bzzzzzt. Didn't work that time, and won't work this time either.
The question really is what do you measure, and how do you measure it. Seems to me like there are a bunch of measures that may be useful and that don't really involve clicks and hits. Citations and subscriptions seem like fairly important and easy to obtain measures that show whether there is impact or not. Doesn't necessarily tell you whether it's good or bad, but that's probably easier to determine. Determine baseline measures of the networks that are important and see how they change in response to blogs/actions. I'm sure loyalty can be measured in ways that don't require people to "pull numbers out of their ass"...repeat purchasing behaviour, for example ?
Tying this back to the bottom line is, I admit, a lot more difficult, especially as there are so many dependent and independent variables to understand. Also, the lack of [and difficulty in creating] really controlled experiments in this field will hamper the efforts to link blogging [and most other knowledge based company activities] back to the bottom line. But, a measure is a measure - we have to start somewhere, and I'd rather really know that my weblog is reaching more people, being linked to more, or is contributing to better / more targeted information delivery within my company, than just assume and hope that it is because it's "full of bloggy goodness" [(c) Phil Wolff].
Here's another introduction to what SNA is and how and why to use it - Social Network Analysis for Users by Dr. Harald Katzmair
A soon to be ex-colleague of mine is blogging - check out Roy Tomizawa talking about stuff (generally on an HR - Performance Measurement/Management tip) here at sameriver.com
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