Local Social Summit & the Oxford Internet Institute Present a unique half day seminar on Social Network Analysis (SNA)

Seminar in Social Network Analysis:

Putting The Audience Together – Using Social Network Analysis for Business Insights

When: Wednesday 29 February 2012; 12.30-17.30

Where: Wallacespace, London, WC1H 9PN

Course Title: Putting The Audience Together – Using Social Network Analysis for Business Insights

Instructor: Dr Bernie Hogan, Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute of Oxford University 

Limited to only 20 spaces. Early bird prices are £95 (before 31-Jan) and then go up to £495

Overview: You will learn how to pull a Facebook and Twitter network graph into Excel using NodeXL*. How to interpret social graphs using powerful Social Network Analysis (SNA) techniques and then apply insights to your online business, applications, product, community or brand.

Who Should Attend: This course is designed for senior business strategists, data gurus, social media managers, brand managers, product developers and technologists who want to develop skills in advanced social network analysis tools.

*About NodeXL: A Microsoft Research-sponsored open source plug-in tool for network visualisations in MS Excel. Go HERE to download NodeXL (no charge, a free open source plug-in).

All three relied on the capabilities of NodeXL, the open tool built by the Social Media Research Foundation to map and understand networks, and which Smith described as “aspiring to be the Firefox for networks”.

Network Graph of #LSS11 on Twitter - made with NodeXL

Before Smith’s session, his SMRF colleague, Dr Bernie Hogan, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, also talked about the science of social networks. He started from the position that at the moment, networks seem to be more useful and interesting to scientists than the general public. We understand that there’s value in understanding networks, but we don’t know how to get at it. In this session and his lunchtime workshop, Hogan set out the basics of social network analysis. He identified three levels of information you can get from a map of a social network: individual position, clustering and the shape of the network itself. And he introduced the three canonical metrics of network analysis: degree, which is the number of connections someone has; closeness, which shows how connected someone is to people to whom lots of people are connected; and between-ness, which measures the shortest paths between individuals.

Of these metrics, he said, degree is the most obvious and the most used by companies in their search for social media influencers. But it can be misleading, because the person with the highest number of connections isn’t necessarily the one who exerts the most influence. Between-ness, he argued, is actually a better measure, because it allows you to identify where clusters overlap and connect.

Smith put it another way. “Between-ness is your bridge score,” he explained. “It’s why two connections can be more powerful than 200.” According to Smith, companies looking for influencers should be looking for bridges, because they are people who control the flow of information into new communities.

Having developed the NodeXL tool, the SMRF is encouraging people to use it to graph social networks, and to share their graphs with other users. According to Smith, the work is already paying dividends in allowing them to see the different characteristic shapes of social networks, what Smith calls the flavours. And he’s also tracked the progress of those shapes over time. The example he gave was of communities around message boards, which have a characteristic shape defined by “answer people”, people who have a lot of outgoing connections but few incoming ones, reflecting the fact that a lot of people listen to what they say for advice, but don’t then respond. Smith showed how to recognise these people in a community, and how you can see when they leave. The number one reason they leave is because of hurt feelings, the sense that they’re not appreciated, But as Smith noted, these people can save fortunes in customer service, by acting as an unofficial helpdesk or call centre. And getting them back can involve as little as sending them a branded coffee mug and an understanding message. Without that map of the network, however, all you’d know is that the volume of calls to your helpdesk had shot up, with no explanation why.

Both presentations are available on slideshare:

• LSS'11: Charting Collections Of Connections In Social Media – Dr Marc Smith
• LSS'11: Science of Social Media: Social Network Analysis On Facebook – Dr Bernie Hogan

Local Social Summit is overflowing with great sessions on Social Network Analysis (SNA) this year. We are fortunate to have Dr Bernie Hogen from the Oxford Internet Institute back to lead us on not one but two sessions. Both of these will be on Day 2 – Thursday 10th of November. He can follow him on twitter @blurky.

1) 9:55 – 10:15am  Insights – Science of Social Media: Social Network Analysis On Facebook Data:

This talk gives a brief overview to thinking in networks, and how the clusters and patterns of these nets can inform our ways addressing behaviours on social media. I briefly cover some of the good news and bad news from Facebook research. On the positive side, people who engage the site feel more connected to the wider world and have a better sense of social resources. On the negative side, having all of one's friends on a single site flattens self-presentation into one-size-fits-all identities that can led to social faux pas, self-censorship and social sanctions.

2) 12:45-1:30pm: Seminar in Social Network Analysis (during the 2nd part of lunch in a dedicated Seminar breakout room!):

If we live in a networked world, then where are the networks? This talk gives a brief overview of the ways in which one can capture, visualise and analyse networks. This talk is partially a primer to the logic of social network analysis that can allow businesses to learn from and interpret the communities they value so highly. I introduce NodeXL, a package for downloading networks, and show how it can be used to chart a Facebook network, and how to read this network. I also tie this to Inmaps, a similar offering from LinkedIn. To follow along with this tutorial in the audience, I recommend you download NodeXL (https://nodexl.codeplex.com) and the Socialnetimporter (https://socialnetimporter.codeplex.com/ ). I conclude with an overview of what can and can't be downloaded from the Facebook API, especially for fan pages and groups.

The Local Social team are very excited to be part of Social Media Week in London for the 2nd year in a row. For 2011 we have put together what we hope if both an interesting and fun event.

Here are the details for this years event:

Two Sides to Every Story – A Local Social Case Study

Learn while eating great food and meeting interesting people…

Come explore the story of what happened when one of London’s leading lights of the food scene led a group of Burgernatics in a flashmob/#BurgerMondaySwarm of the Waterloo Station Burger King. Gain exclusive knowledge on how a Global Brand listened to a Social Media Community and got involved in a successful event. This is gourmet burgers and craft beer followed by a seminar which will include the case study, social network analysis (SNA) and discussion…

LSS@SMW’11 brings you not the humble hamburger in a posh restaurant but rather a posh burger in a humble restaurant. A London food celebrity will take over the flat-top griddle at a classic British 1950s caff transformed into the Young & Foodish Diner. For more info on the venue and PopUp concept you can check it out HERE.

This is a unique opportunity to learn about how a global brand interacted with a social community at the local level in a very considered way, while executing on a stellar global social media strategy. You’ll gain insight into the new ways people are using social media to organise (and swarm) locally, build new business models and increase brand equity.

Additionally, we are very excited to have Dr. Bernie Hogan joining us again from the Oxford Internet Institute to present a social network analysis (SNA) of the #BurgerMondaySwarm event (= the science part).

Tickets are £35 per person and includes food, drinks and the seminar. Tickets are limited so get them HERE soon!

LSS@Social Media Week:  The Science of Social Media

It could be said that most people have faith that Social Media is more than a new hype bubble. While faith alone isn’t a bad thing, we plan to add some reason as we explore the Science of Social Media

LSS@Social Media Week is brought to you by:

Confirmed Speakers:

• Dr. Bernie Hogan from the Oxford Internet Institute – Bernie will taking time out from his busy teaching and media schedule to present his latest research into the emerging issue of social information overload and effective methodologies for leveraging online interactions and new media in everyday life.
• Stephen Leighton owner of Has Bean Coffee: http://www.hasbean.co.uk/ – A conversation with the up and coming UK and coffee’s answer to Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library and Crushit)
• Paul McCrudden - from Imagination & #6weeks fame, will share insights and knowledge from how consumers are interacting with brands
• Carolyn Watt, Founder and Managing Director of Yabber, Profero’s digital PR and social media division will be presenting an exciting case study

When: Thursday, 4th February 2010, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Where: The Hospital Club (http://www.thehospitalclub.com/)

Social Media Week: The second annual conference will take place between February 1st – 5th, 2010 simultaneously in New York City, Berlin, London, San Francisco, Toronto and São Paulo. The five day conference will explore the profound impact that social media has on culture, business communications and society at large.

More Details & Register:

For more details click here to go to the event page and you can get your tickets through the eventbrite ticket microsite.

We have now posted up most of the videos that we took at LSS ’09 on our YouTube channel – 34 videos in total so far which is over 5 hours of quality video – http://www.youtube.com/localsocialsummit.

Please note that some of the ‘credit’ screens are not complete and are missing some of the names of panelists. There should be full details within  the description on YouTube or you can view the final LSS ’09 agenda here – http://www.localsocialsummit.com/lss/final-agenda/.

Here’s a list of the sessions currently on YouTube:

• Session 1 – Parts 1 to 5: Keynote Presentation – Decoding Generation Y – Who really has digital friends? – Robert Barnard, Founder of Decode
• Session 2 – Parts 1 to 6: Panel – Social Media Marketing  – The Rules are Changing
• Session 3 – Panel – Mobile – The Future of Apps is Bright. Panel 3 videos are not up yet, should be ready in a the next couple of days:.
• Session 4 – Parts 1 to 5: Afternoon Keynote – Making sense of the networked audience: The case of Facebook – Dr. Bernie Hogan is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute.
• Session 5 – Parts 1 to 5: Panel – Local Gets Social – The Impact of User Generated Content and the Promise of Real-Time Search
• Session 6 – Parts 1 to 9: Panel – Local Content & Monetisation – A View from  Europe
• Session 7 – Parts 1 to 4: Lab: What does the Perfect Local Media Company Look Like in 5 Years Time

No videos of the Hitwise Goes Postal presentation.  But you can watch and listen to this as a great Webinar here – https://admin.na6.acrobat.com/_a799316515/p44796378/.

Also, no video of the The Opportunity of Social Media presentation but the slide deck is available here – http://www.slideshare.net/LocalSocialSummit/lss09-the-opportunity-of-social-media-amino-tech.

Suggested highlights from the YouTube videos include:

From Session 4 parts 1 and 2. Part 1 is what I am calling the “death of distance” segment and Part 2 which is the “paradox of conveince” segment.

• Session 4, part 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxXBJnJAatk
• Session 4, part 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bz9EuGzLYM

From Session 5 parts 2 and 3 as this is where we start to get an interesting  debate around both the definition and value of real-time search.

• Session 5, part 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-E3ydmxQ-8
• Session 5, part 3 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n75qbjAP_9M

More about the real-time search debate (what is it and is it useful for local-social) can be found here on Search Engine Land and Screenwrek.

In true social media sharing style we have put all the presentations up on the LSS Slideshare account.

We think most attendees will agree that two of the highlighst for the day were the keynote presentations which you will find below… Video and audio podcasts to following a few days as well…

• Keynote: Making sense of the networked audience: The case of Facebook
  - Dr. Bernie Hogan is a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute

• Keynote: Decoding Generation Y: Who really has digital friends? – Robert Barnard, Founder of Decode

• Mobile panel is now 11.40am
• Local Gets Social is now 2.10pm
• Local Content & Monetisation is now 3.50pm

All times are GMT. Full schedule see below…