University Seminar
“Evolution of
Social Networking
in IBM”
Chris Sparshott, IBM Social Software

Things Change
“I think there is a world market Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
for maybe five computers.”
“Computers in the future may weigh Popular Mechanics, 1949
no more than 1.5 tons. ”
“There is no reason anyone Ken Olsen, founder of DEC, 1977
would want a computer in their
home. ”
“640K ought to be enough
Bill Gates, 1981
for anybody. ”

Agenda
• IBM Research
• Evolution of Social
Networking
(in IBM)
• Opportunities
• Questions

History of IBM Innovation
Lasik technology
4

History of IBM Innovation
Lasik technology
5

Centre for Social Software
• Centre of excellence for social software research
• Key research goal: promote “venture research,” based on
scalable internal and external deployment
• Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, USA
• Local programs in first year include Corporate Residency
Program, year-round internships and public speakers series
• Globally, the center is a focal point for social software research
and development. It is a partnership of IBM Research, IBM
Global Business Services, IBM Software Group and IBM’s CIO
office.

Internship Opportunities
Michael Muller,
IBM Researcher

Smarter Planet
Intelligent Smart energy Smart retail
Smart traffic Smart food Smart
oil field grids
systems systems healthcare
technologies
Smart water Smart supply Smart Smart Smart Smart cities
management chains countries weather regions

Vision of Service Science
“The vision of service science is to
discover the underlying principles of
complex service systems”
We don’t have a roadmap for investment
e.g. if I put 80% of my investment in a
service no way of knowing or predicting
the performance improvements.

Evolution of
Social
Networking
in IBM

Evolution Roadmap
10. Beehive for
Lotus
Connections
*1
11: Virtual
8. Atlas for Lotus World (MUVE)
Connections
integration
9. Beehive
*1
6. Smallblue
4. Dogear 7. Lotus
Connections
5. Fringe
2. Domino and
Lotus Notes
3. Bluepages
1. NOSS /
Mainframe
11
*1 Chris’ best guess

1. Mainframe
Email, calendars, communities,
corporate directory lookup

2. Domino and Lotus Notes
Corporate directory went into a domino directory
RAD development environment
Intranet userid and password was born
Enhanced corporate directory became a possibility

3. Bluepages
Combined (mashed-up)
* Mainframe / HR
* Lotus Domino
* Unstructured data
* Applications
* Bespoke Solution

4. Dogear
IBM Research on Tagging
• Using Social Tagging to Improve Social
Navigation
– David R Millen and Jonathan Feinberg
• Supporting social search with social
bookmarking
– David R Millen, Steve Whittaker**, Meng Yang,
Jonathan Feinberg (** University of Sheffield)
• Dogear: Social Bookmarking in the
Enterprise
– David R Millen, Jonathan Feinberg, Bernard Kerr

Dogear Analysis: Return On Contribution is a
ratio of benefit divided by cost
Benefit
Return on Contribution (ROC) =
Cost
*No direct monetary costs the metric is therefore based on people
*Assume employees make appropriate and strategic use of available
collaborative resources
Number of people who
benefit from a resource
Return on Contribution (ROC) =
Number of people who create
or contribute to that resource

Dogear: Return on Contribution
Measure Social-Bookmarking
Consumers 10896
Bookmark -Originators 4213
Return on Contribution 2.59
(Consumers)
Consumers 10896
Return on Contribution (ROC) = = = 2.59
Originators 4213
* Some consumers may also be originators (Michael Muller’s research)

5. Fringe
(Bluepages + Dogear)

6. SmallBlue
Value of Social Networks
A Large Scale Analysis on
Network Structure Impact to
Financial Revenue of Information
Technology Consultants
http://smallblue.research.ibm.com/

Objective
• To estimate the value of social networks.
• How does social capital influence productivity
• Study in depth how information workers obtain
information through various communications
channels and social networks
• To measure the impact to revenue at the personal
and project level of the information workers

Who did IBM study?
IBM Global Services Business
Consultants

What is the role of a Consultant
Perform high quality project work
Delight the customer
Generate repeat business
Make $ for IBM
(…and to stay off the bench)

What was measured?
• 2600 IBM Global
Business Services
consultants over 2
years (2006-2008)
• Across 70 Countries
• Derive the network of
350k employees
• Overall observation of
10k consulting projects

What was measured?
Why is this important?
People interaction
Exact time of interaction
Emails,
Content exchanged
Instant messaging

What was measured?
• Detailed and objective
performance
measurements of the
consultants
• Number of billable hours
• Number of projects
• Revenue generated
• Explore relationship
between social network and
productivity of those
consultants

Conducted 15 intensive interviews
Efficient access to information
Timely access to valuable
information results in higher
quality decision making

Results
• The value of each person in your address book is $948
• When friends of your friends are not friends of each other
or belong to the same social group. = 276.64 % increase
in monthly revenues
• One strong link to your manager is worth $588.2 /m
• One weak link to your manager costs $98.48 /m
• Having managers in a project is correlated with team
performance initially.
• Too many managers in a project is negatively associated with
team performance.
• Strong ties to executives is positively correlated.
• Attributes of your network human capital, power and
status have a unique relationship with work performance

Results
• Optimal team composition is not to have all super stars, but
complementary team members with a few information keepers
who are in the middle of information highway.
• Start to better understand that composing a project team with
desirable network characteristics is instrumental to the project
success and work performance of the individual team
members
Closer connection to specialist information reduced the impact
of distortion
• No performance relationship for
– access to different divisions
– access to different geographical locations
gender distribution
–

Results
SmallBlue
Large-scale knowledge and social
network analysis search engine

SmallBlue components
Personal social network Organizational social
management network analysis tool
Is this the ‘best’
person to approach
Find expertise in your
and how?
extended network

Find a skill

Top 100 results in
How do you choose who to connect
a ranked order
with? Use the Social Dashboard (Reach)

Community, results of
a find search, Social
path or Dogear tag

Analyse a person

My Network (Ego)

7. Lotus Connections
Bluepages and Dogear (Fringe)
becomes productised

8. Atlas
SmallBlue becomes
productised with
Lotus Connections

Information is pulled from
Lotus Connections rather
than Bluepages

9. Beehive

What is Beehive?
Opt-in social networking site
Profiles – self-branding
Shared content – connecting
•photos, lists, events relationship
building
Social interaction
People discovery and awareness
On boarding people
sensemaking
Staying connected

Beehive Profile Page
people you are
connected to in
beehive
share photos of
family, friends,
holiday, IBM
create, invite and events… keep it
attend virtual clean
events or
combine these
with F2F
meetings. use
them for informal
brainstorming
hive5s are list of
5 things, such
as “5 things to
details from
do for your
your BluePages
PBC”
profile

Beehive Profile Page
talk about
yourself
what is
happening in
your network;
leave
how many comments too
photos, hive5’s,
events,
connections
you have

Usage Statistics
social sharing is welcomed at work

6500 people created profile pages
8000 photos
3500 lists
350 hosted events

Evolution Roadmap
10. Beehive for
Lotus
Connections
*1
11: Virtual
8. Atlas for Lotus World
Connections integration
9. Beehive *1
6. Smallblue
4. Dogear 7. Lotus
Connections
5. Fringe
2. Domino and
Lotus Notes
3. Bluepages
1. NOSS /
Mainframe
77
*1 Chris’ best guess

Networks are important

Opportunities
• PhD internships
• Internships
• Speaking
engagements
• Software pilot partners
• Software for education

Is it question time?
(or Sametime 3D video)

Thank you
Think

Connect?
Chris Sparshott
(Sparkbouy)
spa rkbouy@gmail.com
Portfolio
http://w ww.slideshare .net/s pa rkbouy/slideshow s
Blog
http://c hriss pa rshott.com
IBM
chris _spars hott@nz.ibm.com