Social Networking Falling Under the Influence of Others
By Azam on June 6, 2011
Social Networking is a powerful tool in sharing and decimating information across a network. I have been thinking on this idea for some time from telecom to statecraft. In telecom, networks are geared towards passing data to nodes and the number of nodes connected means data is shared on exponential level. In statecraft you have few powerful individuals that influence policy due to expert knowledge and personal relationships that enable decisions and effect policy outcomes. The two different cases have very different goals and outcomes involved. The Internet is the greatest intervention of all time due to the ability to share information across the widest network of nodes. Expert Networks are different in they are specialized and focused on niched area of knowledge share by fewer individuals centered on interest. The value is currently being creating networks that add increasing value. This argument is what is Google vs. facebook is moving towards and pose this biggest threat to Google.
Google has built value on the search engine as source of information as result of the page rank algorithm. The mathematical scoring of web pages in relationship to rank scoring based on number of links to webpage. This is a robust and route manner of data to give currently the best method of a general search. The information and links are continually updated and compared to give best results. You have the ability to enter any search without entering context and usually get a decent result.
Facebook is based on social network for friends that share content with each other and which can be anything of interest. The information is being generated by individuals and shared in a manner more like a conversation that is never ending. The date is very useful and will be used to better understand and target you as and individual and across the networks in a social graph. Facebook is sitting on tons of data that is valuable and unique connections to links on the internet. The data is centered around individuals and their shared networks. The social networks is a totally different way of looking at data and interest shared across various groups.
As social beings, we have the ability to influence each other. This is a significant difference between social networks and search. Search is a individual task of entering data in search engine and looking as a result. Social Networks will give results from personal relationships and different perspectives than your own. You would be more open to a suggestion to a trusted source than from a random instance.
LinkedIn is a professional social network that targets specialized group of more educated and professional workers. LinkedIn makes money from recruiters with access to profiles and work experience with references. LinkedIn will likely expand based on highly skill workers on specialized professions and their groups.
We are moving towards influence and social networks of influence. We would start basing decisions of social networks and behavioral tastes. You might analyze data or suggestion based on the network and previous behavioral response. These social networks and patterns are online and more easily analyzed. Tools are being developed such as Klout and PeerIndex
Klout is measuring influence of individual in social networking. Klout measures your ability to influence other based on Twitter and Facebook. Klout measures on a variety of factors such of links, posts, network, topics, etc.
Peer Index
PeerIndex examines social activity across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs and Q&A site Quora, evaluating a users’ “online social capital” based on the activity of the individual across their various social platforms.
In the future, these tools will be used to target audiences based on interest and select to target those that will be effective in influencing others on the topic of interest. Advertising for example will target influencers to share information on brands across the social network. Others may utilize influencers to promote an idea or interest in direction or change their own in response.
What is interesting is that these networks themselves are the interest, and social networks ability to influence decisions and directions of the conversation.
Tags : Facebook, Google, klout, LinkedIn, peerindex, Social Networks