All Annotations of Technology Review: Mapping Professional Networks[Preview]

saved by3 people, first byRobin Peckham on 2008-01-01, last bymazyar hedayat on 2008-02-01

• IBM is exploring how different visualizations of the social graph could be useful within businesses, as a way of helping people work more efficiently and make better connections. Last week the company, which launched its social-software platform, Lotus Connections, earlier this year, released a tool called Atlas that uses the data in Connections to help users analyze their relationships with business contacts.
• Connections suite allows workers to create profiles, blog, form communities around common interests, share bookmarks, and plan and track projects as a group. Each component of Connections is integrated with the others, so a user can move seamlessly between tools.
• The larger Connections suite allows workers to create profiles, blog, form communities around common interests, share bookmarks, and plan and track projects as a group. Each component of Connections is integrated with the others, so a user can move seamlessly between tools.
• collects information about professional relationships based not only on job descriptions and information readily available through the corporate directory, but also through blog tags, bookmarks, and group membership
• e-mail and instant-message patterns
• weigh different types of information more or less heavily
• It collects information about professional relationships based not only on job descriptions and information readily available through the corporate directory, but also through blog tags, bookmarks, and group membership
• Find, Reach, Net, and My Net
• Atlas can be configured to look at e-mail and instant-message patterns, and to weigh different types of information more or less heavily. The result, Lamb says, is a set of tools that go beyond the simple networks that are clear from a corporation's structure.
• Atlas's four features are Find, Reach, Net, and My Net. Find and Reach are both focused on finding experts in particular fields. Through Find, a user enters search terms and receives a list of experts, ranked based on information gleaned from social data, the level of the expert's activity in the community, and any connections he may have to trusted associates of the user. Reach then helps the user plot the shortest path to make the connection, suggesting people the user already knows who could put him in touch with an expert. Net and My Net are primarily meant to help people analyze their existing networks. Net shows patterns of relationships within particular topic areas at a company-wide level. For example, it might analyze data on people interested in social computing and produce a map of how those people connect with each other through blog readership and community involvement. My Net allows individuals to analyze their own networks, showing them who they are connected to and how frequently they stay in touch with those people.

• on 2008-01-01 Rpeckham
  Could be very useful. I say we abandon antiquated notions of privacy (I've decided I no longer have any secrets since I started using social networks professionally)and cross-list these graphs with social networking consolidators as well.