Tagged: Duncan-Watts RSS

  • Gaurav Mishra 11:44 am on May 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , 33Across, , , BuzzLogic, Cameron Marlow, , , , Duncan-Watts, Facebook Research, Friendship Networks, , Influence Mapping, Linkfluence, , Microsoft Research, Morningside Analytics, , Network mapping, Rapleaf, , Social Interactions, , , , , , , , , Yahoo! Research   

    Using Network and Influence Analysis to Map Social Media Consumer Behavior 

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    Stephen Baker at BusinessWeek has a great cover story on how social networking companies and marketers are using network and influence analysis to map social media consumer behavior and target ads to cluster of friends who share similar interests.

    While research has shown that friends tend to behave similarly online, it has also raised lots of questions about the nature of online friendships. Most researchers now agree that all friendships networks aren’t the same.

    Microsoft Research sociologist dana boyd explains the difference between personal, behavioral and articulated networks –

    Facebook researcher Cameron Marlow differentiates between maintained relationships, one-way communications and two-way communications.

    Duncan Watts from Yahoo! Research studies the structure and evolution of social networks, the origins and consequences of social influence, and the nature of distributed social search.

    Apart from citing cutting edge network analysis research at Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo!, the article also features the work of network analysis firms such as 33Across and Rapleaf.

    33Across’s SocialDNA platform maps the social characteristics of tens of millions of people to enable its clients to target users who are most likely to respond to their marketing campaigns.

    Rapleaf mines social media data and follows the network behavior of 480 million people to enable its clients to better target their marketing campaigns.

    Other notable network and influence analysis companies include Linkfluence, Morningside Analytics, and BuzzLogic.

    Linkfluence uses network analysis as a starting point to focus its content analysis, enabling it to offer segment-wise social media analytics services to its clients.

    Morningside Analytics discovers emergent Attention Clusters, or communities of bloggers and readers, that form around particular ideas.

    BuzzLogic uses network analysis to identify influential websites and target ads to them as relevant conversation unfold on them.

    While 33Across installs cookies on partner social networks, instant messaging services and widgets, the other services mostly mine publicly available link and semantic data to construct network and influence maps.

    The 20:20 Approach to Social Media Analytics treats network and influence analysis as the starting point for social media monitoring and measurement. Network analysis is the key to understanding relationships, memberships and authority. Combined with content analysis and web analytics, network analysis can stitch together a rich picture of social interactions and conversations, and help marketers understand consumer behavior and design better social media marketing programs.

    For a conversation on how to use network analysis as a starting point for your social media program, write to gaurav AT 2020webtech DOT com.

    Cross-posted at the 20:20 Social Media Analytics Blog.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 5:41 pm on December 17, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Big Seed Advertising, , Duncan-Watts, Eyebeam R&D, Forward Track, Incrementing Action Tag, , Rajorfish, Shive Singh, Social Media Influence,   

    Measuring Social Media Influence: Razorfish’s Incrementing Action Tag vs. Duncan Watts’s ForwardTrack 

    Shiv Singh of Razorfish writes about its patent to measure social media influence –

    The Incrementing Action Tag is thus able to identify (via a cookie and unique identifier and not through personally identifiable information) and track social media, identify how far removed (generation) cookies are from the original source of the social media, and identify key influencers (again no PII- see note above) of users of social media. In essence, this technology enables our agency to create a system that allows us to value and reach key influencers across the Internet, regardless of property.

    Incrementing Action Tag sounds interesting but it’s very similar to the ForwardTrack tool used in Duncan Watts’s Big Seed Advertising method –

    ForwardTrack is a new system created by Eyebeam R&D designed to promote on-line activism. The system tracks and maps the diffusion of email forwards, political calls-to-action, and online petitions. It can trace email forwards, map the impact of blogs, and facilitate web-based sign-ups and social networking.

    Social media analytics is going to be an extremely exciting area in the next few years and it’s great to see intersting new ways of approaching it.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 7:43 pm on January 29, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Duncan-Watts, , , , , , The-Influentials, , The-Tipping-Point, , ,   

    Potential Game Changer for Word-of-Mouth/ Social/ Viral Marketing: Duncan Watts Debunks Influentials & Tipping Point 

    Quick Summary: Duncan Watts debunks The Influentials and The Tipping Point, but word-of-mouth/ social/ viral marketing practitioners will do well to continue to focus on the tipping point potential of influentials.

    -X-X-X-

    Here’s a potential game changer for word-of-mouth/ social/ viral marketing.

    Word-of-mouth/ social/ viral marketing is based on the premise, best captured in bestsellers like The Influentials and The Tipping Point, that a small cadre of well-connected people can trigger, or tip, trends. Reach the influentials and you’ll reach everyone else through them, basically for free.

    Now, based on his new research, network theory scientist Duncan Watts, who is working at Yahoo! on sabbatical from Columbia University, says that this simple premise is wrong. While I’m still trying to fully understand what Watts own premise is, here is my three sentence summary of what he seems to be saying –

    - Even supper-connected influentials don’t have the power to start a trend, unless the social context is anyways susceptible to the trend.

    - The key, therefore, lies not in identifying influentials who will tip a trend, but in identifying trends that are ready to be tipped.

    - It’s virtually impossible to artificially/ virally start off trends because the network effects in society are too complex and random.

    Based on his research, Watts has developed a social marketing approach called Big Seed Marketing, which can double or even quadruple the reach of an ordinary online campaign. The idea is that you build a word-of-mouth into the ad campaign, but aim the ad at as broad a market as possible and not waste money chasing influentials.

    The buzz around Duncan Watts is amazing after Clive Thompson profiled him in Fast Company. While I’ll spend most of the evening reading the 200 odd posts linking to the Fast Company article, and updating this post, here are my three top of the mind thoughts on the article –

    - Both Malcolm Gladwell and Duncan Watts agree that in order to spread, an idea needs to be sticky and appear in a conducive social context. In my understanding, the only disagreement is on the role influentials play in spreading the idea.

    - Everybody agrees that ideas spread faster when they tap into the power of word-of-mouth. In my understanding, the only disagreement again is on the dominant role of influentials in driving word-of-mouth.

    - Everybody, even Duncan Watts, agrees that influentials spread ideas faster than others. In my understanding, the only disagreement is on the cost effectiveness of targeting influentials.

    So, unless I’m way off the mark here, and correct me if I am, the Gladwell vs Watts debate is basically about whether you should spend your marketing dollars targeting your ads at a lower number of influentials or reaching a broader market. This is a debate about cost trade-offs, not the fundamental nature of social networks.

    Given that the objective of most marketers is to spread a given idea in the most cost-efficient manner (and it is), given that improvements in technology will make it more cost-efficient to identify and target influentials (and it will), and given that influentials themselves will become more connected via social media tools (and they will), word-of-mouth/ social/ viral marketing practitioners will do well to continue to focus on the tipping point potential of influentials.

    -X-X-X-

    Here are some other interesting perspectives on the issue — Mike Masnick, Scott Karp, Mathew Ingram, Gavin Heaton, Karl Long, David Armano, Guy Kawasaki, David Reich, Noah Brier and Valeria Maltoni.

     

    • Gavin Heaton 2:33 am on January 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Gaurav … my view is that marketers are not just interested in spreading ideas (ie reach), but about changing/transforming behaviour and thinking. This means that a closer examination of the network of weak links is important rather than a concentration on the strong links of influencers. And that concept has flow on effects for strategy as well as execution.

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