Visualising the Social Map

Original image found here

Mapping the social network to create social maps is a great way to make social networks tangible.

This map from Loic Lemeur is one of my favourites perhaps for its simplicity

Although there are plenty of other ways to visualise the social graph some awesome ones here and here

It is interesting how diverse the interpreted graphs are. This is a reminder that the timelessness of experience on the internet means that in reality we can’t capture or freeze a moment in time, and in viusualising an individual social map (in a snapshot sense) we are in effect distorting reality by adding subjectivity.

Role of trust in social graph manipulation

As explored previously one of the most interesting cultural shifts in terms of the online social network is the issue of trust. Social groups are demanding transparency, and the power of the network suggests it is more effective to pay attention to what the group wants rather than try and control the group.

After all, in the forum of sociology and the agency – structure debate one can say that an individuals status in society is no longer what they themselves think, but what other people think, so therefore the power lies in the group and not the individual.

The possibility for information manipulation is ever present. There are ways in which in which advertisers have failed when trying to manipulate the social graph to their advantage:

QLD Tourism campaign, Witchery fake Cinderella Story from earlier this year and subsequent analysis

 Aswell as examples where they may have succeeded: Fbi Radio's Ask Richard campaign and the wonderful still free project by Marc Ecko.

The difference between the successful  and the unsuccessful manipulations of the social graph is where the line was drawn when deliberately trying to deceive an audience, with no real intention to cause dialogue, but simply to deceive in order to create traffic.

As Nick Ellery  writes on his Blog Marketing is a dirty word; this is no different to spamming. In fact, it is probably getting closer to phishing than spamming, as it is deliberately misleading and getting viewers to engage with video / messages they wouldn’t otherwise if they knew it was not genuine.

Is being able to see exactly who is connected in the social graph causing an previously non existent manipulation of the network?

Here is a question, is being able to see exactly who is connected in the social graph causing an previously non existent manipulation of the network?  If we think of recent news stories for example here, here and here concerning the not so savoury links people may have had on facebook or myspace, or the use of these social networking sites to establish existing connections in scandals or track down perpetrators of crime. Is this a valid use of social media in a legal sense, or a manipulation of always existent yet previously unseen networks, now that we can see them (friend tag clouds etc) suddenly the connections are proven and valid? 

Or is this irrelevant, and is the behaviour of networks, including Social Media Networks, just replicating predictable behaviour found in social networks since the beginning of time?

As John Tropea writes here

 “You can slice data anyway you like, to analyse social behaviour; but this is fun because it revolves around you. Not only that but we make inferences from this data and we can action things.”

To infer something from data is to use existing empirical evidence of network theory and applying it to a social network. This is a great way to predict how information my travel around a network, and maybe in the future statistical and epidemiological evidence pertaining to social networks will enable accurate predictions to take place. Where externalities are accounted for and the consistency of change will prove (not just indicate) the existence of laws and rules regarding social change.

Open ID and the portable Social Graph

A couple of years ago Alex Iksold wrote about the cultural shift the implementation of an open source version of the social web (Open Social) might have. And he talked about the age of the attention economy and how our online ID or Open ID acts as a portable social graph and creates a new type of web culture where companies recognize users are entitled to information (transparency).

“Consumers are going to recognize that if their social graph is portable and if their attention information is portable in social networks, then it should be portable at large”

Now that Open ID provided by most of the online power players (Myspace, Google, Facebook etc), we have already seen this shift in terms of truth in online advertising and the rise of social activism. It is interesting to consider what effect the acceptance of a portable, visible social graph will have on privacy. Will it become accepted that the web is a public space and for the information network to be most effective, transparency is paramount? Or, will it be accepted that maintaining privacy is the responsibility of the individual rather than the group and as soon as any information enters the public domain it no longer private? Or is regulating privacy with in the online space the responsibility of governments and/ or corporations (where the power lies). 

 Food for thought.

How the social graph makes advertisers honest (or as honest as advertisers can be)

After looking at the Digital Divide, it has been interesting to see how power lies within the social graph,  and how this in turn creates unique network effects, separate to those offline.

This is an interesting piece written by Tony Effick Communications Strategist and Chief Strategy Officer of Online Advertising Agency: Publicis Modem London

In it he talks about, amongst othere stuff, how the nature of advertising has shifted enourmously since the onset of Web 2.0. It seems that the dream of Tim Berners Lee “Intelligent Agents” (1999) is beginning to become a reality and with it comes good news for the consumer.

No longer is the advertising world built around an uneven balance of information. Nowadays the consumer has  access to a huge variety of decentralized information online (as opposed to the previously centralized dominated mediums of Television and Radio). This access to information transparency and the introduction of aggregator sites (which collate data and provide smart analysis) means that consumers are more savvy when it comes to a product and are not as willing to trust a brand straight up.

The upshot of this is that no longer will a brand rely on being a household name, but they will begin to offer real service value and honesty will become the best policy.

As Effick writes:

"You can already see that intelligent agents, and aggregator sites are an antidote to branding. They level the playing field. In these environments, brand claims are easily neutralised by information transparency. They aren't a complete antidote, as we find on aggregator sites, people still tend to choose the brands they know and trust, but it does change the dynamic of the market.

In the age of the semantic web, and in this age of the aggregators - information transparency demands that the role of the advertising agency changes…The dawn of intelligent agents requires the dawn of a new type of ideas shop: one dedicated to creating branded utilities and branded services.”

Does this shift mean that finally advertisers no longer have immunity from honesty? Has the advent of intelligent agents completed the seismic power shift from brands to the consumer. No longer can a brand pull the wool over the eyes of a savy consumer...  and is it the innate transparency of the internet that has achieved this?

Food for thought.

The changing Social Network

“Neighbours even began emailing each other to suggest meetings. Mr Mahar's favourite story is about a Serb and a Croat who lived next door to each other but had never spoken: after going online they began chatting about Solitaire on their PCs.” 

In an interesting branch to digital divide I came across this article on the effect of digital technology on an established offline network, specifically  a network which isn’t “firing” particularly well.  An Australian  non-profit Infoxchange has started connecting communities online who previously had no access to the Internet and digital technology, or no understanding of how to use these technologies.

The first successful project was a high rise social housing complex in urban Melbourne. Apart from addressing the growing issue of Digital Divide, what is also interesting was the reignition of dormant networks that outside the internet had not functioned yet through the use of such tools as email and chat, information paths opened.

An example being the the two real world neighbours,  a Serb and a Croat, who had never spoken together but once online started chatting about a new found common interest: the game of solitaire on the PC.

This to me seems like a good example of how an online social network doesn’t always mirror an offline one and indeed the things that group networks together differ significantly online and offline.  Online, opposed social groups (such as Serbia and Croatia where the scars of war are still evident and nationalism rife) can form a connection, and change the shape of a network, which in turn will change the overall network effect.

Update: One year on in the Coolingwood project and in response to resident demand, extra training is taking on a new dimension to cover social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Flickr, as well as instant messaging and the use of webcams.