On the robustness of Twitter and false SAT Analogies
This blog entry is a response to Cody Brown's post here. I wanted to leave a comment on the post, but it was going to run a bit long, so I thought I'd put up a response of my own.…
This blog entry is a response to Cody Brown's post here. I wanted to leave a comment on the post, but it was going to run a bit long, so I thought I'd put up a response of my own.…
My colleagues Derek Hansen and Ben Shneiderman (University of Maryland) and I have just finished the second version of our tutorial/manual for the NodeXL social network analysis toolkit for Excel.
The latest version of the tutorial Analyzing Social Media Networks: Learning by Doing with NodeXL is now available from the University of Maryland Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information (CASCI) web site. We will use this version of the document in our upcoming tutorial at the Communities and Technologies conference at Penn State University on June 24th.
We plan to continue to expand the tutorial to include a step-by-step guide to the analysis of several major social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, delicious, and flickr as well as personal stores of social media like your own email (if it is stored in a Windows Search Index found on most Windows desktops). Our goal is to create an easy-to-follow guide to network theory for people who new to the field or who do not want to develop programming skills to perform network analysis. We are focused on social media as a data source for social media although other examples are included, like the United States Senate voting network that reveals interesting patterns in the connections created when votes are cast. Using 2007 data it reveals which Senators are most likely to change party affiliation.

Your comments, corrections, and suggestions for improving the document are welcome.
Instructors interested in teaching classes about social networks are welcome to make use of both the NodeXL toolkit and the document to guide students through the core concepts of social network theory.
Here is the table of contents:
Derek Hansen (University of Maryland) and I will be running a workshop as part of the Communities and Technologies conference next week in University Park, PA. We have room for additional participants. If anyone is interested, please email me (marc.smith@telligent.com)…
I just read a new paper from Jennifer Preece and Ben Shneiderman that provides a nice framework for the ways people contribute at different rates to collective projects in general and social media on the Internet in particular. Preece, Jennifer…
The Communities and Technologies conference is holding its 4th meeting in Penn State June 24-27. This conference gathers a range of scholars interested in online community, social media, social networks, and mobile social software. A paper "Analyzing (Social Media) Networks…
The upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston June 22-25 features several presentations of possible interest. George Dearing and I will both be on panels and, centrally, there is a presentation from Telligent co-founder Rob Howard about what is new at Telligent Systems:
Enterprise 2.0: Work, Productivity and ROI Today’s ever-changing workforce requires that enterprises tackle an array of shifting demands. Adapting to the various ways people collaborate and work together without actually being in the same place is now an organizational necessity, not just an option. Join us for this informative session as Rob Howard, Founder of Telligent and an innovator of online collaboration strategies, presents Enterprise 2.0 and social computing in the context of work, productivity and ROI. Enterprises that have embraced collaborative computing and analytics are realizing results in increased workforce productivity, expanded input and insight from customers and partners, and now have the ability to manage and report on the value of these efforts. Join us for this session and walk away understanding how you can prepare today for the future of work.
Speaker – Rob Howard, Co-Founder, Telligent
George Dearing from Telligent and I will both be on additional panels at the conference. I am looking forward to the chance to present along with Kate Niederhoffer from Dachis again; we presented at Web 2.0 on the topic of “Beyond Buzz: On Measuring a Conversation” which I think was well received. Details below: