Social Network Analysis

Caught the article, this weekend, in Business 2.0 (www.business2.com) on Social Networking (http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1060100,00.html ) that highlighted the success of the Indie music social network site MySpace (www.myspace.com) and the college connection site www.thefacebook.com .

Orgnet.com ( http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html ) defines Social Network Analysis (SNA) as “the mapping and measuring of relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, animals, computers or other information/knowledge processing entities.”

Having done a couple of Social Networking Analysis projects in business, my thinking is that it’s catching on in the mainstream, and time to update the old knowledgebase on this subject.

Rob Cross, Associate Professor at McIntire School of Commerce, has highlighted the key benefit of doing SNA, “Organizational network analysis (ONA) can provide an x-ray into the inner workings of an organization --- a powerful means of making invisible patterns of information flow and collaboration in strategically important groups visible.” http://www.robcross.org/sna.htm

Time to get an updated view of Social Networking and Social Network Analysis. The MySpace model is particularly interesting given the reported power of the connection between the band (the organization) and their fan-base (customers).