Complexity and Social Networks Blog

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29 February 2008

How To Use LinkedIn

There is a great piece in yesterday's New York Times (28 February) by Michelle Slatalla on using LinkedIn and similar network sites to actually make business connections. In Building a Web of Influence, she writes:

My problem could be networking. Or more specifically, a lack of it. I work in a basement where my only business contacts are my dogs, which appear unimpressed by my résumé. And on rare occasions when I venture aboveground to attend an event with the sort of people who should be only too willing to offer stock options in return for my grandmother’s chocolate cake recipe, I get tongue-tied. I blush.

On the Internet, however, no one can tell you’re self-conscious. Business networking sites — from the five-year-old site LinkedIn.com to an upstart called NotchUp.com — attract members by stating that reluctant self-promoters like me can make contacts, and even get job interviews, fairly passively.

she goes on ....

Slowly, I began to see concrete signs of the value of passive networking. One day, a first-degree contact asked me to introduce her through LinkedIn to one of my other first-degree contacts, a writer at The New York Times who my friend thought might be interested in a book she wrote. She phoned soon after to say thank you; the writer had responded right away.

A few days later, the same newspaper writer coincidentally forwarded an introduction to me from one of her first-degree contacts, a magazine editor looking for a humor writer.

Meanwhile, another first-degree contact told me her daughter had landed an interview after learning at LinkedIn that the interviewer and she went to the same college.

and concludes:

In my case, I’m too busy now to change jobs. But someday, after my dogs learn to turn doorknobs with their paws and my husband’s cough finally breaks up, I will be ready.

I only hope that by then, the Exxon recruiter I see listed among my third-degree LinkedIn contacts will be searching for someone with expertise in “weekly allowance arbitration.”

It's a great piece. Take a look at it.

Posted by Stan Wasserman at 1:20 PM | Comments (3)

28 February 2008

Interview: Thorsten Jacobi on the current state and trends in social software

I have come up with a new format for our blog. In the next couple of months I will post interviews with leading Internet entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who can share their insider knowledge on the current state and future of social software/Web 2.0. Hopefully this is inspiring to those with entrepreneurial ambitions in the area as well as interesting to researchers who want to work on the "next big thing".

Dear Thorsten, you have been involved in various internet ventures either as part of the management team (21Publish, kinkaa, Newtron, Creative Weblogging) or as investor. We are very happy that you are taking the time to answer our questions.

Please tell us about your latest activities.

Hehe - that is a broad question - I did run my first marathon, saw my first two kids born and I do continue to bootstrap two startups - Kinkaa (a meta travel search engine for Europe) and Creative Weblogging (a blog media network).

Will the social software industry be affected by the economic downturn? Have you recognized or experienced a change in entrepreneurial or investor activity within the last couple of months?

People are certainly more cautious as everyone is trying to figure out what the impacts could be (less marketing spend, less advertising). However its just psychology so far - I haven't seen any early stage deals fall apart (as it happened with many private equity deals). Overall it seems that early stage deals show a healthy consolidation but its hard to forecast this further for me.

Let's say someone would like to start a social networking venture today. What would be your recommendations? Do you believe that the ideas are still of interest to Angel investors or VC's?

They are - just look at a Hamburg (Germany) based social network for classic car ('oldtimer') lovers. It just raised funds in the end of last year. Social networks must have a convincing organic growth and should target a certain specific demographic. If there is a good business model or good idea to make money besides running ads that can indeed be an enticing mix for investors.

Google executives recently said that it is harder than expected to generate revenue from online social networks. What is your opinion on the potential revenue models for social networks?

CPMs (price per 1000 impressions) will continue to be below average compared to other internet services. Nevertheless social networks market themselves mostly and can claim enormous amounts of users with very little marketing needed. So most will break even eventually.

Many social networking platforms have made it easier for companies to mine their user data for marketing purposes. Do you think this is the right move or will the internet community strike back?

I feel it's not a good idea to move into that direction. It was felt like going 'under your skin' as a user. Most initiatives have backtracked already from their former stance.

A follow-up question. Aren't you tired of keeping your profile up to date in all those social networks. Wouldn't it be the best way to create a single XML type online identity?

Absolutely - but remember each social network has a (slightly) different purpose - my identity in LinkedIn and MySpace may never be the same.

Merging data from social software with the real world has been discussed in the past under the name of "location based services". Though we have yet to see applications and devices that are available and used by a majority of users. When and how could this change?

It must become ubiquitous - all (or most) phones need GPS. Data plans must be included into a normal mobile phone subscription. Mobile phone displays and UI must improve so that even your grandma can login to Facebook from her mobile phone. Seems a coupe of years off - judging from my grandma who has yet to buy a mobile phone...

As a pan-european investor you are seeing and hearing about trends before they emerge. Is there an area of social software that we should be aware of in the near future? Will we be seeing more crowd based business concepts such as the trend to allow users to share almost anything?

I like the idea of Amazon Mechnical Turk a lot - it's basically an API for the human mind. It's still a lot of theory and only so much practice, but social networks with all the user data could eventually build their business on a similar platform. Social networks as an API to knowledge and human services?
...
I kept it short - hope it still helps. Please let me know if you have any more questions.
Best, TJ

Torsten Jacobi or 'TJ' is a serial entrepreneur and investor with experience in the software and media industry in the U.S. and Europe. He lives close to Silicon Valley with his family.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

26 February 2008

Online Social Network User Fatigue?

Today's online version of the economist included the following figure on membership growth of facebook. It appears that growth rates have somewhat peaked.

How about our readers. Are you tired of your current social networks?

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 9:03 AM | Comments (1)

25 February 2008

Second Call for Papers / Funding for doctoral student training for Harvard conference on networks

Second Call for Papers / Funding for doctoral student training:

Conference at Harvard on Networks in Political Science (deadline MARCH 1ST)

The study of networks has exploded over the last decade, both in the
social and hard sciences. From sociology to biology, there has been a
paradigm shift from a focus on the units of the system to the
relationships among those units. Despite a tradition incorporating
network ideas dating back at least 70 years, political science has been
largely left out of this recent creative surge. This has begun to change,
as witnessed, for example, by an exponential increase in network-related
research presented at the major disciplinary conferences.

We therefore announce an open call for paper proposals for presentation
at a conference on "Networks in Political Science" (NIPS). We are
soliciting papers that apply network ideas in the fields of
American Politics, International Relations, Comparative Politics,
Political Theory, Public Administration, and Political Methodology.

The conference will take place June 13-14. Preceding the conference on
June 11-12 we will also provide a series of workshops introducing existing
substantive areas of research, statistical methods (and software packages)
for dealing with the distinctive dependencies of network data, and network
visualization. There will be workshops covering UCINET, Netdraw,
exponential random graph models, SIENA, P*, and potentially other
topics as well.

There will be a $50 conference fee, as well as a $20 fee per workshop.

FUNDING IS AVAILABLE TO DEFRAY THE COSTS OF ATTENDANCE FOR DOCTORAL
STUDENTS AND RECENT (post 2005) PhD.'s. Funding may also be available for
graduate students not presenting papers, but preference will be given to
students using network analysis in their dissertations. Women and
minorities are especially encouraged to apply.

The deadline for submitting a paper proposal is March 1, 2008. Proposals
should include a title and a one-paragraph abstract. Graduate students
and recent Ph.D.'s applying for funding should also include their CV, a
letter of support from their advisor, and a brief statement about their
intended use of network analysis. Send them to

networked_governance@ksg.harvard.edu.

NIPS is supported by the National Science Foundation, and sponsored by the
Program on Networked Governance at Harvard University. The final program
will be available at www.ksg.harvard.edu/netgov.

Program Committee: Christopher Ansell (UCBerkeley), James Fowler (UCSD),
Michael Heaney (Florida), David Lazer (Harvard), Scott McClurg (Southern
Illinois), John Padgett (Chicago), John Scholz (Florida State), Sarah
Reckhow (UCBerkeley), Paul Thurner (Mannheim), and Michael Ward
(University of Washington).

Posted by David Lazer at 9:42 AM | Comments (0)

24 February 2008

Obama, techology, and social networks

There is a very nice piece in today's Boston Globe on the role that technology has played in mobilizing support for Obama. There are snippets below, but I recommend reading the whole article.

There are a few key ingredients, it seems to me, to the strategy. First is the facilitation of the meeting of people with shared interests and goals. Second is creating a forum for people to express their views. Third is the provision of scripts and plans for the mobilization and coordination of action.

I should note that this is a combination of a bottom-up and top-down processes. This is not really like Meetup.com facilitating the rise of Howard Dean. The engineering of the site my.barackobama.com was designed to achieve certain, very specific, ends. It is notable that the Obama campaign developed its own proprietary platform rather than rely on existing platforms, such as Meetup and Facebook (although, Obama very much has a presence on those websites as well). This was, in part, for control reasons, I assume. The provision of those plans is also clearly a top down process. However, the actual use of these tools is totally bottom up, where the decisions of people to join the website are interdependent, enthusiasm breeding enthusiasm.

The success of the Obama campaign highlights one of the shortcomings of one of the dominant perspectives on political mobilization. Following from Mancur Olson's classic book, The Logic of Collective Action, it is a puzzle why people would contribute so much time and effort when, individually, their work is extremely unlikely to be decisive. This view of collective action is based on an assumption that the reason why people act is based on the impact their individual efforts will make to the collective endeavor. In fact, humans are social animals, and it is that combination of connection (with others) and cause that is so very powerful in politics and other domains (most notably, religion).

In the comments I would be interested in hearing the observations of others about the role of networks and technology in this political season.

In any case, the excerpts:

Technology aids Obama's outreach drive
Volunteers answer call on social networking site

More than any previous presidential campaign, Obama's effort is transforming politics with its use of technology. The astounding fund-raising figures are well documented - the campaign keeps a running tally on its website as it closes in on 1 million donors. But Obama's team has taken the use of the Internet to another level by allowing masses of volunteers to self-organize over the past year and communicate through their own social networking site, my.barackobama.com.

Created with help from Chris Hughes, one of three Harvard roommates who invented Facebook four years ago, MyBO, as campaign staffers call it, has about 500,000 members nationwide, a network of groups and individuals that the campaign ultimately harnesses for the old-fashioned nuts-and-bolts of electioneering – identifying supporters and getting them to vote in primaries and caucuses.

…

Clinton's campaign, relying more on traditional resources such as labor unions and elected officials, is also cobbling together an Ohio organization. Using its own e-mail list, the Clinton team recently received about 1,000 online replies statewide from people willing to help. The campaign was pleased with the response. The Obama camp, in contrast, drew 500 people from the Columbus area alone to the union hall of Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 189 on a Wednesday night in the middle of winter.

...

Valli Frausto, a 50-year-old mother of two from Columbus, was one of the first to open a MyBO account when Obama announced his candidacy a year ago. Several months earlier, she had seen Obama on Oprah Winfrey's show.

"I've never been involved in a political campaign before, but it was like a call to action for me," she said. "I said if he runs, I want to help, and with the way he put his campaign together, with all these tools available to us, it allowed me to get involved."

For the past year, Frausto estimates she has spent 20 hours a week as one of the administrators of Central Ohioans for Obama and a few others of the more than 300 groups established in Ohio through MyBO.

...

The groups have put out information tables at perhaps 20 festivals and fairs around Columbus, and held a 5-kilometer road race and other fund-raisers. They also hold debate parties, phone bank events, and happy hour gatherings to socialize, brainstorm, and introduce new members.

"It was all done through my.barackobama.com," Frausto said. "We would not exist if not for that tool. It's phenomenal to me."

…

Now, however, with the Ohio primary approaching, the campaign is much more actively coordinating the activists, most notably through phone banking. From a MyBO page, a member can click onto a list of 20 phone numbers with a series of prompts and scripts that the caller runs through, entering the responses of voters online. The information goes into the campaign database for its primary day get-out-the-vote operation.

Posted by David Lazer at 10:33 PM | Comments (1)

Tapping on the wisdom of the crowd: Social network analysis software tools on Wikipedia

Together with Jana Diesner, CMU, and Matthias Meyer, WHU, I have started to collect information on social network analysis software packages and libraries.
In order to be able to make a selection from a larger pool of tools, we searched the literature and the Web for archives of tools that are widely accepted. Our goal here was to compile a systematic and (to an extent) exhaustive list of tools along with their main features, application areas and possibilities for interoperability across tools. We failed in this effort.
Clearly, there is a plethora of listings of some of the tools according to more or less explicitly stated categorization or selection criteria out there (e.g. INSNA and the chapter by Huisman and Duijn (2005) on Software for Social Network Analysis).
However, none of these lists seemed complete or up-to-date to us. We noticed that compiling our own list leads to the exact same problems, and we think we are not the only ones who went through this process. We thought this might be a good case for putting the wisdom of crowd idea into action in the social networks community. Our rationale here is that no single Web editor or researcher needs to carry the burden of building and/or maintaining such a collection, but collectively this goal can be achieved with very little individual effort.
Wikipedia has an elaborated site on Social networks (the Social network analysis site is automatically redirected there). We started to expand the network analytic section by adding a table – which was moved by the community within a day to a new page now called Social Network Analysis Software that allows everyone to add a tool along with a URL, short description, unique feature, platform it runs on, price.
We hereby invite the social network community members to add their tools and/ or to edit/ fill some of the cells in the table. Note, the present structure of the table is a suggestion, and can be modified by anyone. Potentially, this table and the references associated with it might grow -in this case we might move the table to a new page that will be linked from the current page. If you have trouble working with the Wikipedia Table you can also send your information to Jana and we will integrate it into Wikipedia. We are looking forward to the collective results!

Ines Mergel
Jana Diesner
Matthias Meyer

Posted by Ines Mergel at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

19 February 2008

Visuals of NYC communication

Really interesting and beautiful visuals of New York City communication with the rest of the world, courtesy of the the Senseable City Laboratory at MIT (based on aggregated telecomm data), will be on display at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC February 24 to May 12. Or you could go this website....

Posted by David Lazer at 10:29 PM | Comments (1)

The bigger your network, the better your outcome ....

From today's (2/19/08) NYT Science section ..... Large social networks may help surgical patients .... it appears that having a large network of friends and family may help you do better in surgical procedures (surprised?).

From a study published in the February 2008 issue of The Journal of the American College of Surgeons,
Social Connectedness and Patient Recovery after Major Operations, one of the authors, Daniel B. Hinshaw, a professor of surgery at the University of Michigan , states:

"The average physician, when he takes a social history, asks about smoking and drugs and not the real social situation of the patient. And yet it looks like this is a real marker for problems".

Posted by Stan Wasserman at 1:35 PM | Comments (0)

9 February 2008

Searching for the next President...

It is an interesting and important question how voters search for information about candidates. Presumably, in a democracy, one hopes that institutions push people to deliberate about the choices before them, because (1) it would normatively be a good thing that the collective choice reflects the balance of well-thought out opinions about the direction of the country, (2) that the (individual) deliberative process has a cumulative effect on people’s knowledge and preferences, and (3) thinking about the collective choice helps forge a civic identity.

Political science often offers a rather pessimistic view of the capacity of voters to make informed decisions. However, this view is often based on an overly static of the voter. (I will blog another day regarding a paper that I am working on with Kevin Esterling and Mike Neblo on this subject.) Voters (arguably) search for information on an as-needed basis. Much of that search is around nonhuman sources (e.g., news media), and much of it human sources (e.g., friends and family). One of the nice things about the Internet, as I have written before, is the digital record people leave of their behavior (as compared, for example, to casual conversations). So here’s a little fun with google trends: Below are two figures from google trends, one for google searches for the names of each of the remaining candidates for President over the last 30 days in the whole country, and one for Washington State, which is holding its caucuses today.

I would note that for the first figure, of the top 10 states that conducted these searches, 8 were Super Tuesday states, one was DC, and one was South Carolina. Put together, these figures offer a glimpse of how the campaign drives people’s search for information about the candidates; and they also offer a hint of who people are looking for information about. An emphasis needs to be put on the word “glimpse” because we are drawing on a particular sample of searching behavior. What types of people look where for what types of information? The contrast shows up quite clearly between Paul and Huckabee is illuminating, where Paul is relying on an Internet-based network, and Huckabee more of a church-based network. One suspects that this figure thus over-represents the relative number of people looking for information about Paul.

HERE IS THE KEY:

Blue: Obama
Red: Clinton
Yellow: McCain
Green: Paul
Purple: Huckabee

Posted by David Lazer at 2:24 PM | Comments (0)

8 February 2008

Networks, intrade.com, and super tuesday

In an earlier post I discussed how intrade.com on election nights anticipates electoral outcomes a few hours before they are publicly known. Well, what happened on Super/Duper/Tsunami Tuesday? Here is a chart that does not do justice to the wild vacillations (a finer granularity focused on just 3pm to 3am super tuesday would have been ideal; unfortunately, I could not produce a chart with exactly the right time period.):

Late afternoon/early evening Obama shot up from mid 40s to about 60, and then collapsed to about 40, and steadily climbed to a level a bit above 55.

What happened? The early movement in Obama shares certainly did not anticipate the outcomes of the evening. Well, apparently, the private information flowing through the network "in the know" was that early exit polls were very good for Obama-- potentially in a good position to win California, for example. This would have been a huge victory for him. Of course, as the returns came in (and more data to the exit polls, which generally did pretty well), it became increasingly clear that while Obama would do fine for the night, he would not win California, resulting in a lot of selling of Obama stock (note the volumes).

And the information since Tuesday, especially on the money front, has been very good for Obama, presumably fueling an increase in value Obama shares (I have not parsed the timing of the Clinton announcement and the movement of Obama/Clinton shares).

In any case, sometimes where there's smoke, there is a fire. Just, perhaps, hidden in the network....

Posted by David Lazer at 3:53 PM | Comments (0)

6 February 2008

Cambridge Colloquium on Complexity and Social Networks

I am pleased to announce the Spring, 2008 speakers for the Cambridge Colloquium on Complexity and Social Networks:

Martin Nowak (Harvard) on February 11: Evolutionary dynamics of cooperation.

Asim Khwaja (Harvard) February 25: The value of business networks: evidence from an emerging economy

Robert Goldstone (Indiana) March 3: The hive mind: experiments and models of human collective behavior

Patrick Wolfe and Benjamin Olding (Harvard) April 21: Sampling random networks to discover structure: models and methods

All colloquia will be at noon in the Fainsod room (third floor Littauer building at the Kennedy School). A light lunch will be served.

Posted by David Lazer at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

5 February 2008

Jennifer Chayes

Jennifer Chayes, of Microsoft Research (formerly in Math at UCLA) was just named director of a new Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge.

She is well-known to the Network Science crowd, doing good work in statistical physics. She also knows social networks. Good choice by Microsoft. Nice piece in yesterday's New York Times: Microsoft Adds Research Lab in East as Others Cut Back.

From the article:

The work she did in developing simple models of certain liquids and solids turned out to be useful in the study of random, self-engineered networks like the Internet. And some of Dr. Chayes’s insights into theoretical computer science have recently led to the development of some exceedingly fast networking algorithms.

Posted by Stan Wasserman at 2:34 PM | Comments (0)

More on the Massachusetts primary...

A few more observations about the primary in Massachusetts: I voted this morning, apparently in the midst of heavy turnout. There is this charming tradition of sign holding for candidates outside of the voting areas. I don't know how common this is-- certainly, it wasn't the case in other states I have lived and voted in (Michigan and New Jersey). It is all quite civil-- I walked by the Obama (two) and Clinton (one) sign holders and they were talking about local affairs. There no Romney signs, notably, since this is his home town (although I am sure he votes in the higher rent precinct). And, of course, the sign holders are members of the community, so people who pass by always are stopping to chat with the sign holders. These little exchanges, I think, are the microscopic civic foundations of a democracy.

Posted by David Lazer at 9:41 AM | Comments (2)

Monetizing social networks more difficult than expected

Today's WSJ reports that Google executives said the company was having a harder time than it expected generating ad revenue on social-networking sites. In particular, this would put Microsoft's evaluation of Facebook under scrutiny. Around the world, other OSN ventures such as Facebook recently introduced new terms of business to make it easier to utilize the user information for marketing purposes. Many members complained about the move, some even left. Therefore, privacy is still of importance to many users and strategies discussed in Relationship Marketing (see also permission marketing) might be the right move for OSN ventures.

Posted by Alexander Schellong at 7:48 AM | Comments (0)

4 February 2008

Watching you watch us...

Every once in a while I take a look at how much traffic we get on the blog (we get around 2000 unique visitors a month). Tonight I was rather startled to see a striking drop in daily traffic over a several day period last month:

It is a striking little example of the collective patterns we create, and how those patterns can create signatures of "distress" (in this case a collective communication breakdown). I am sure if you analyzed the years of day to day data, this drop off would pop out as a statically unique event, begging the question: what happened?

I am actually pretty sure of the answer, but let me throw the question out to the readers of the blog, since you presumably, collectively, know the answer.

Posted by David Lazer at 10:21 PM | Comments (6)

Thanks!

Thanks, David.
I very much looking forward to joining, and hope that I can contribute good and interesting stuff. Your intro was very flattering .... thank you. And I will even own up to having a connection to the institution that sponsors this blog, so I feel a bit like I belong.

My interests are networks in science and business, and I will try to post regularly!

Posted by Stan Wasserman at 4:32 PM | Comments (0)

The election comes to Massachusetts

A small but telling note about the "invisible" networks mobilizing around the primary-- a canvasser for Obama knocked on my door yesterday. A few observations: the canvasser was not someone i knew, but was from the neighborhood (4 or so blocks from my house); she had a checklist of doors to knock on; my town is not obviously promising Obama territory, where the median voter is probably about 50 and white; and, more generally, surveys have suggested that Clinton has the biggest lead in Massachusetts of any of the Super Tuesday states (see wonderful pollster.com graphic). There were no other canvassers that came to our door, and no others that I saw, generally, going door to door.

What does this tell us? It suggests that there is a formidable and sophisticated grassroots mobilization effort by the Obama campaign-- with primaries tomorrow covering a population of about 150 million people the Obama campaign had someone from my neighborhood knock on my door. The fact that it was someone local reflects the mobilization of local networks, the fact that she had a computerized print out of people to talk to suggests the sophisticated and centralized dimension of those efforts. Field studies suggest that these mobilization efforts can be very effective, and the effect must be amplified if it is someone from the neighborhood (as compared to outside canvassers). It also highlights the intensity of the Obama support, which is only partially reflected in voting (since the votes of high intensity people count no more than those of low intensity people, although presumably they are more likely to turn out), because intensity is related also to efforts to persuade. (My intuition therefore is that, at least in Massachusetts, polls are understating Obama's support-- although that intuition may wilt in about 28 hours.)

The other thing that this highlights is the role that elections play in spurring civic discussions. It is one of the curses of the electoral college system that the election does not come to states that are uncompetitive. It has been a long time since Republicans and Democrats fought over Massachusetts. There are votes (on the margin) to be fought over here, probably as many as in any state, but no electoral college votes to be won. As a result, the election settles with a vengeance in places like Ohio and Florida, but states like Massachusetts and Utah are utterly ignored. The Democratic and Republican primaries offer a nice contrast, where the Democratic delegates are awarded roughly proportional to the number of votes Clinton and Obama get in each Congressional district, whereas the Republican primary is winner take all. In part as a result there is vastly more competition for votes on the Democratic side than the Republican side, because McCain cannot hope to win delegates here, and Obama can.

Once tomorrow is past, the election is pretty much over for Massachusetts, except for commercials aimed at New Hampshire this Fall (since New Hampshire will be a competitive state). And I think that is unfortunate, because these kind of election-spurred discussions are healthy for our democracy.

Posted by David Lazer at 2:10 PM | Comments (0)