Is Social-Media Link Authority B.S.?

December 5, 2008 · Comments

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image by via CrunchBase

Daniel Romero, a scientist at the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, and HP Labs, just sent me his latest research paper on the online social networks that “truly matter”. His team focused on the Twitter network, analyzing a total of 309,740 users, who on average posted 255 posts, had 85 followers, and followed 80 other users. The gist:

[E]ven when using a very weak definition of “friend” (i.e. anyone who a user has directed a post to at least twice) we find that Twitter users have a very small number of friends compared to the number of followers and followees they declare. This implies the existence of two different networks: a very dense one made up of followers and followees, and a sparser and simpler network of actual friends. The latter proves to be a more influential network in driving Twitter usage since users with many actual friends tend to post more updates than users with few actual friends. On the other hand, users with many followers or followees post updates more infrequently than those with few followers or followees.

Many people, including scholars, advertisers and political activists, see online social networks as an opportunity to study the propagation of ideas, the formation of social bonds and viral marketing, among others. This view should be tempered by our findings that a link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them. As we showed in the case of Twitter, most of the links declared within Twitter were meaningless from an interaction point of view. Thus the need to find the hidden social network; the one that matters when trying to rely on word of mouth to spread an idea, a belief, or a trend.

Note this: “a link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them.” That bodes detrimental for the many assumptions of influence and value-weighting that have severely shaped social-media metrics and authority. It’s similar to SEO strategy, where many practitioners will conveniently overvalue top search-engine results and undervalue the volume and quality of traffic that results.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Related posts:

  1. I’ve Adopted Social Bookmarking Link Posts
  2. Social Media Is Lexical Deviation
  3. Email Blows Away All Other Social Networks
  4. Comment Of The Week: Kate Niederhoffer On The Effect Of Transparent Measurement In Social Media
  5. Social-Media Metrics In Their Infancy

Tagged as: Cornell University, Daniel Romero, HP Labs, Social network, twitter, Viral marketing

  • You're making a lot of assumptions to jump from some initial findings regarding a very new type of media with no real analogy, to claiming that the assumptions underlying the use of link structure are under attack. Does it matter that your update regarding eating a cheeseburger did or didn't reach the right people?
  • Matt: Thanks for chiming in and I hope you're well. But "under attack" are
    your words, clearly not mine. I'm not making any broad assumptions -- at
    least I was not intending to. However, the possibility that "a link between
    any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them" is
    extremely important at a time when there's often blind conviction driving
    strong, yet ambiguous beliefs about the value of an online social-network
    connection, or, in this case, a stable of "friends" on Twitter. In fact, I
    believe social connections online -- i.e., a Twitter friend -- are extremely
    valuable, but they are also nuanced and misunderstood. As far as that
    cheesburger goes (when was that, anyway?), it does matter that it reached
    the right people. And if it went over Twitter, it was received by people who
    OPTED into my content feed, boring as it may be. But of all the people who
    opted into my Twitter feed (thereby creating a "link" with me), I really
    have no clue how many actually pay attention to me, or even actively use
    Twitter anymore. I suppose that a lot of Twitter and many other social
    network connections are like dead-tree magazine subscriptions: junk, as in
    most technically pile up on my coffee table, but otherwise have no meaning
    in my life. Those connections certainly may be cumulative and high-impact,
    but they might also be a false proxy of interaction or connection.
  • Very interesting study. I'm always intrigued to hear more about whether there is much substance to relationships developed online through social networks. What you mention about Facebook is very true where users have lots of friends but in reality only communicate with a small selection of them on a day to day basis. But from an ego centric point of view users will always want more friends or followers which can be a help or a hinderance to marketers like myself.
  • I have no reservation about the importance of relationships initiated or
    nurtured online: they're HUGELY SIGNIFICANT. I have utmost reservation about
    superficial proxies used to score their significance quantitatively or
    qualitatively. You're right about followers...they drive ego, but this study
    underscores the possibility there might be a negative correlation between
    volume and impact -- the higher the volume, the lower the impact (whatever
    "impact" is defined as, I know it's, variable). But this also brings up the
    interesting question of how known quantities of followers may inform a
    person's view of another.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Previous post:

Next post: