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.
