Explaining The Social Graph

Everyone's talking about Social Graphs and Jeremiah Owyang recently penned a wonderful and brief synapsis of what a Social Graph is and what it means to your business.  From his post:

"The Social Graph is the representation of our relationships. Today, these graphs define our personal, family, or business communities on social websites. Unfortunately, we’re duplicating our same Social Graph on multiple websites, resulting in inaccurate data and time spent managing it. Despite many challenges, our Social Graphs should be self-managed from a single trusted source, replicated to websites of our choosing, thus resulting in accurate, efficient, relationship management."

But sometimes words—even highly synthesized words aren't enough.  So I'm including two recent visuals in this post that are related to the topic of Social Graphs.  Feel free to use them in your next presentation.  Credit is always appreciated.

Comments

[Ann Handley]

I really like your drawings... thanks.

: )

[Caleb Chang]

Great post. I like the analogy of ripples and think your drawing accurately represents the SM fragmentation that is going - indeed, people are spreading themselves too thin. I also agree with Jeremiah that there needs to be a trusted relationship management tool. Friends in my circle are asking for it. Can't wait to see what emerges.

[Nathan Ketsdever]

I would submit that on a good numbers of sites that there are holes or voids in the social graph. Certainly, time, the market, and word of mouth rectify this, but in the meantime, it can risk problems.

[Seni Thomas]

Very interesting. The way I see it the OpenSocial models works because it aggregates out social graph and allows us to store our information in one location, but lets us filter it out to a variety of micro-communities. Media needs to fragment to stay meaningful and facebook at this point just doesn't stand for anything other than a messy mash-up of 'stuff'.

Perhaps these two posts flesh it out a little better.

Why all media must fragment;
http://senithomas.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/why-all-media-platforms-must-fragment/

OpenSocial + Micro-Communities:
http://senithomas.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/how-googles-opensocial-will-revolutionize-community-targeting/

[david cushman]

Hi David. As always, great illustrations.
But I remain confused about social graphs. Here's my problem: Are social graphs any different from the multiple self-forming groups which can form within any network and which are described by Reed's Law?
I'm going to blog a little about this myself today (which is why I leapt here when I saw the title of your post!) and will welcome all the help I can get!!!

[david cushman]

David, thanks for the inspiration. I've added some thoughts to my blow and welcome your ideas.
http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2007/11/social-graph-is-it-what-me-myself-and-i.html

[bob willcox]

Excellent visualization, as usual. Your's always kick start new ideas. A thought on customer "touches" and developing the conversation. This process you have represented previously in a "Marketing Spiral". The customer impressions could be represented in a pyramid with awareness at the top and community at the bottom (suggested elsewhere). Consider the social ripples occur with in the pyramid. They drive both the height of the pyramid (time from awareness to community) and width of the bottom of the pyramid (number of impressions). If there is a critical mass of impressions, then it will occur sooner with the additional social "ripples". Most importantly, better informed conversations start sooner.

[deb schultz]

beautiful - just beautiful

[Chris Brogan...]

That's the sexy. Deb Schultz sent me here. She was raving about your arts. She's at least a level 2. : )

[Arvino]

interesting and very useful graphic david. very interesting indeed. it gives background insight and perspectives where things and stuff like "facebook" resides, and how it differs from the "opensocial" approach. at the same time it also clarify the "position and location of email" in the increasing interconnectivity (and rippling) of things. thanks so much for sharing. great stuff.

[mark Earls]

Great Stuff, David.

Just a thought: what if you drew the model the other way round?

The"ripples" arise from something we and our clever peers have done; what if the important effects arose from individuals within systems copying/interacting with each other (rather than what we do to them)?

Also, "rippling" still seems very information-based (like messages?) and I'm not sure this is necessarily right (for anything but information-systems)

See what you think