Perilocity

Two Decades of Social Networking Analysis

Valdis Krebs celebrates twenty years of practical social networking analysis and says that Degrees, Closeness, and Betweenness remain the winners among metrics. Such metrics and Valdis' work continues to be very useful in estimating and managing risk.

-jsq

Directed Scale-Free Networks

John Robb points out that students of terrorists networks have discovered they're directed scale-free networks. That is, communication isn't always two-way; often there's much more communication in one direction between two people than in another. In particular, one person may be a hub who talks to many people, but each of those other people may have little to say back.

This seems familiar somehow; oh; yes: it's like USENET. Anyway, it seems good risk management to understand what sort of network you're dealing with.

-jsq

Connectors and Mavens, Bloggers and Innovators

Valdis Krebs has taken the ideas of connectors and mavens as described in Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, and measured and mapped them for a smallish geographic area, northern Ohio. What he's measured is connections among bloggers and innovators, both separately, and who's in both networks.

Amusingly enough, the first comment he got was from the most connected connector he measured. Who remarked that he had deliberately tried to build his network of connections this way. Reality imitates art?

I think it would be even more interesting if these connector maps were updated regularly, and animated to show changes over time.

-jsq