SNA Comes to Blogosphere

The Blogger Tribe at Ryze has been the subject of a social network analysis and mapping experiment by Ross Mayfield, Valdis Krebs and Pete Kaminski. The results of this SNA are interesting as it actually did two surveys at once. It checked out the connections between the members of the blogtribe both as members of Ryze and by their blogrolls on their blogs. Now we can try and compare the two outcomes.

My girlfriend did the same sort of thing for my old fraternity a while back: which people do you meet in person, and which people do you e-mail. It turned out that different people were central nodes in both graphs, with only a few overlapping. Since geographical distance is not a likely reason for this in a country as small as ours, (the Netherlands is a two hour drive east-west, by three hour drive north-south), this was an interesting outcome.

There are a few points of improvement that would make the survey more valuable. First, as noted by both Sebastien Paquet (who is doing his own bit of research into blogs and also wikis)and Andrea Janssen, that the direction of links and reciprocity are of interest.

As Sebastien writes: Link directionality should perhaps be more apparent. Links between weblogs are often not reciprocal. Horizons are not the same depending in which direction you follow the arrows. If you have a big inbound horizon you are highly visible and possibly influential. Many people know you. If you have a big outbound horizon you see a lot of landscape. You know many people. The two are different.

Clearly this would enhance the map of this social network. For the analysis part of it, the question as to who are the important nodes, connecting people that would not have known eachother otherwise, is important. And then in a comparison between the two maps. (Also a comment made by Sebastien)

A third point of interest for me would be to see how these maps change over time. I tend to explore the outbound links of blogs I link to myself and then add the interesting ones to my own outbound links. Through referrerlists I track inbound links as well, and add to my outbound links. So me reacting to my own visibility and my perception of the landscape in the blogosphere change my place in the network, especially since I only have been blogging for two months now. It would be great if it was possible to make sort of 'snapshots' of the networks as time proceeds.