Telligent Social AnalyticsNew Metrics for New MediaResearch & ToolsMarc A. SmithChief Social ScientistTelligent Systems

E-mail (and more) is from people to people2

Patterns are left behind3

Social NetworkTheoryCentral tenet Social structure emerges from the aggregate of relationships (ties) among members of a populationPhenomena of interestEmergence of cliques and clusters from patterns of relationshipsCentrality (core), periphery (isolates), betweennessMethodsSurveys, interviews, observations, log file analysis, computational analysis of matrices(Hampton &Wellman, 1999; Paolillo,2001; Wellman, 2001)Source: Richards, W. (1986). The NEGOPY network analysis program. Burnaby, BC: Department of Communication, Simon Fraser University. pp.7-16

Social media platforms are a source of multiple Social network data sets:“Friends”“Replies”“Follows”“Comments”“Reads”“Co-edits”“Co-mentions”“Hybrids”

Hardin, Garrett. 1968/1977. “The tragedy of the commons.” Science 162: 1243-48. Pp. 16-30 in Managing the Commons, edited by G. Hardin and J. Baden. San Francisco: Freeman.Wellman, Barry. 1997. “An electronic group is virtually a social network.” In S. Kiesler (Ed.), The Culture of the Internet. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 6

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AnswerPersonSignaturesDiscussionPeople11

Discussion StarterSpammerReply orientedDiscussionFlameWarrior12

The Ties that Blind?13

Reply-To NetworkNetwork at distance 2 for the most prolific author of the microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general newsgroupThe Ties that Blind?

15Darwin Bell

The Ties that Blind?Pajek without modification can sometimes reveal structures of great interest.

Mapping Newsgroup Social TiesMicrosoft.public.windowsxp.server.general17Two “answer people” with an emerging 3rd.

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Distinguishing attributes:Answer personOutward ties to local isolatesRelative absence of trianglesFew intense tiesReply MagnetTies from local isolates Often inward only Sparse, few trianglesFew intense tiesReply MagnetTies from local isolates often inward onlySparse, few trianglesFew intense tiesJournal of Social Structure: “Visualizing the Signatures of Social Roles in Online Discussion Groups” http://www.cmu.edu/joss/content/articles/volume8/Welser/

Distinguishing attributes:Answer personOutward ties to local isolatesRelative absence of trianglesFew intense tiesDiscussion personTies from local isolates often inward onlyDense, many trianglesNumerous intense tiesReply MagnetTies from local isolates often inward onlySparse, few trianglesFew intense tiesJournal of Social Structure: “Visualizing the Signatures of Social Roles in Online Discussion Groups” http://www.cmu.edu/joss/content/articles/volume8/Welser/

Recent publications"Visualizing the Signatures of Social Roles in Online Discussion Groups”The Journal of Social Structure. 8(2)“Picturing Usenet”The Journal of Computer Mediated Communication“You are who you talk to”HICSS 2007

Leading research: Adamic et al. 2008Knowledge Sharing and Yahoo Answers: Everyone Knows Something,Adamic, Lada A., Zhang Jun, BakshyEytan, and Ackerman Mark S. , WWW2008, (2008)

Use social network analysis measurements in reporting on social media data.Analytics calculates network metrics for all content authors.In-degreeOut-degreeEigenvector centralityClustering coefficientIngredients of User Type Scores

Social media usage generatesSocial Networks

Display community members sorted by network attributes using Excel Data|Sort

User type reports in Telligent Analytics Include social network metrics to define different kinds of contributors:Answerer: users who reply to many questions from many people. Influencer: users who are connected to other well connected users.Asker: users who raise questions that get answered by answer people.Connector: highly connected users who are replied to or linked to by many other community users.Originator: initiates new content in the site that is often linked to by others.Commenter: replies or links to content created by others.Spectator: reads but tends not to create content.Overseer: moderates content created by others.

NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for ExcelLeverage spreadsheet for storage of edge and vertex datahttp://www.codeplex.com/nodexl

The NodeXL Team

The NodeXL project is Available via the CodePlexOpen Source Project Hosting Site:Site:http://www.codeplex.com/nodexl

NodeXL:Display nodes with subgraph images sorted by network attributes using Excel Data|Sort

Resources to supportEducational Use ofNodeXLFree Tutorial/ManualData SetsAvailable

NodeXL: Filtered clusters

NodeXL: Import social networks from email

NodeXL: Import social networks from email

Social Network Analysis Engine Development: NodeXLExtend and apply social network analysis engine:Improve layouts and visualizationsAdditional metrics and measuresTechnical architecture shift to the web and cloudScale and performanceClustering and time series analysis

NodeXL Partnerships and communityUniversity of MarylandOhio UniversityStanford UniversityUniversity of PennsylvaniaYOU?10,000 + downloads on Codeplex

Telligent AnalyticsProvides a source of network edge lists and integrates social network metrics in User Type ScoresFurther possible social network analysis applicationsRecommendations: my friend’s edit what documents?Search optimization: show documents from “answer people”Role discovery: who are the topic starters? The answer people?

Telligent Social AnalyticsResearch & ToolsMarc A. SmithChief Social ScientistTelligent SystemsMarc.Smith@Telligent.comhttp://www.telligent.comhttp://www.connectedaction.net