One of the most fascinating things about social media is social media science.
Applying mathematical and scientific principles to do things like model a network to understand how ideas might spread through it, or identify where the important ‘nodes’ within the network are. Or perhaps to understand how a Tweet adds financial value to a business. Or even to analyse the profiles of people or business to understand which people are influencers and which people are influenced.
So, the three main areas are:
- social media profile analysis
- social network analysis and modelling
- social media ROI measurement
Each of these areas offer huge insight in to how to manage connections and how to extract the maximum value from a network.
As a start, and for a bit of fun, Download Gephi (a 3D network modelling tool) and install it on your machine, then download a Gephi file of your Facebook network here and away you go. You can then see a £D graphical representation of your entire Facebook network.
Immediately, certain things are going to be apparent; who’s best connected, who’s on the edges of the network, and whether certain groups have formed within the network such as old school friends or work colleagues for example. This will probably give you an insight in to the true shape of your network that you didn’t know before. (the image above is my Facebook network).