I was tagged in a photo, so I knew Clay Newton was playing in Facebook again. To be honest I’m not really big on many of the app’s, but this one was quite interesting! Facebook totally intrigues me because when befriending people or thru random befriending, I see the SAME mutual friends over & over!
Today Robert Scoble blogged in disagreement to Dave Winer saying that social graphs & social networks are one & the same. Scoble says that a social graph is the study of people’s networks. I have a math degree & so this is an interesting debate. The Touchgraph app showing how my friends are interconnected does point to the answer, I believe. Let’s see if you agree?
Do you see immediately what happened? I have two factions: networking friends & digiscrapping friends. Isn’t that fascinating?!! I have 175 friends by the way (not all are here do to privacy settings). It may tell me that I need to increase the diversity of my friends.
Robert Scoble has 5000 friends so it’s not surprising to see his connections. But I didn’t know that my techie friend Hummie was his friend, but I do now! We are the only 2 digiscrappers following him. By mousing over my digifriends I can see who’s connected to each other.
This app also does a lot more. The panes on the left provide a lot of info. By viewing by list the person’s profile is displayed along with their rank. The app defines their rank as:
TouchGraph gives the highest rank to friends who are connectors between different cliques. Finding connectors involves a metric called Betweeness Centrality which is an established measure for a person’s importance within a social network.
So Hummie (at #2) & I are the most closely connected by virtue of our social networks. And I agree with Robert Scoble that this a social graph when you can see other people’s network info. What do you think?
Finally I want to post the video Robert Scoble had of the sister of the owner of Facebook. They use the terms social graphs in here. It was quite interesting.
So what do you think? are these social graphs or social networks?
Update: Dave Winer commented that his commentary has been #1 on Techmeme for 24 hours… and I agree it’s worthy of discussion.
Hey, that’s TMI! It is scary really to me that this can be done….it is getting easier and easier for bad guys on the internet…that’s my first thought.
I cannot keep up with my Facebook. Zillions of people sending me application requests.
Well, I’m not sure if the terms social graphs or social networks applies here but what I do question is the concept of “friend.” I think that the term “friend” means totally different things to people in terms of whether these are “web” or “virtual” friends or the “real thing.” So many people connect now thru Kaboodle or Facebook or MySpace as “friends” but are they really that?
Just my $0.02!
Hey Hummie,
Yes, it is scary to a certain extent. But, I think that if one is online then that risk is accepted when you register?
And Linda,
Yes the term friend vs acquaintance is a good question to ponder. Good point!
Another link that adds to the discussion:
http://chrisbrogan.com/measuring-social-media-efforts/
Go Chris, go!