My Social Graph and Social Index

So I have several spurts in trying to understand, track, and ultimately evolve my social graph and my social index.

For anyone not following these areas of study, here are some definitions:

Social Graph Definition: Social Graph is the network of connections that exist through which people communicate and share information.

Social Index Definition - Social Index is a measurement of the value, size and velocity of a social graph.

I have tried several ways to track my social graph and social index, and recently there has been several tools released to assist. Such as Google Social Graph API, MyBlogLog, Plaxo, FriendFeed, and Disqus.

I'm sure there are more that I am forgetting about. These tools all provide some missing link in tracking my social graph and its value. I'm still trying to pull it all together, but unfortunately it is becoming like managing my social networks, I 'm developing fatigue.

Defining my social graph fatigue! It is getting clearer than ever before, but I still need to squint to see anything even slightly clear.

More to come on this...

Google's New Social Graph API

Google just release a social graph API out into the wild.

Google crawls the Web to find publicly declared relationships between people's accounts, just like Google crawls the Web for links between pages. But instead of returning links to HTML documents, the API returns JSON data structures representing the social relationships that were discovered from all the XFN and FOAF.

XF stands for XHTML Friends Network which is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks by utilizing a simple rel="" property for the hyperlink.

FOAF stands for The Friend of a Friend project and is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

This is definitely a great approach for Google to take to continue bringing the web together. I see a big problem with their not being enough defined content out there on the Internet for this to be useful quite yet. It appears people like Plaxo are working to solve this with their Plaxo Pulse.

Hopefully this is the beginning of Google integrating more social network relationship controls into their gmail contacts, docs and user controls.

Defining My Social Media Index and Settings Some Benchmarks

I was reading, Quantifying the Impact of Social Media: Where the Edelman White Paper Got it Right, Got it Wrong and What We Should Do Next, by Jim Tobin today.

I have been reading all the same white papers and following all the same discussion of Quantifying the Impact of a Social Media Campaign as well as experiencing it real time with social media campaigns I am part of.

As a social media consultant you need to be able to convince your clients that you'll deliver, and you need some way to measure success and failure.

Also establishing the influence of individuals and groups is a huge part of deciding where to spend resources during a social media campaign.

I like Jim's approach to the discussion. He picks apart several prominent opinions on the subject, but doesn't leave it there. He provides solutions, one of which that really caught my attention:

To move the social media index forward, we’ll need a system that serves as the white pages of social media with RSS.

So I thought about my situation and how I would like to define my social media index and what my reach is.

As a social media professional I prefer my presence be high profile and this part of my online activity I am not concerned with privacy.

So I am going to start tracking my social media index and recording all my activities on the net and record this analyzing.

So I started up a simple study today using Google Docs as the tracking mechanism. You can check it out more at: QISM. I look forward to any involvement and comments from you folks.

Marketing through Reputation Management

I monitor my reputation basically on a daily basis as part of my routine. I Google myself and see how things are stacked and if there is anything new.

I have a pretty unique name so I pretty much dominate all the listings.

Today a new profile site showed up on my first page called Disqus. Just pretty much a social network profile and it aggregates comments from me around the Internet.

Will evaluate the tool more later.

Not sure if it was a conscious effort on their part or it just happened, but it occurred to me that you could target prominent Internet users in this way, but publishing a page or starter profile for them and show up in their rankings and spike their interest a little more. Enough to maybe get them to signup?

This page on Disqus had a big "Claim this Profile" button that lured me in, I am a sucker for social networks and big sign me up buttons.

Interesting Tools for Evolving Your Social Graph

I was reading, Delver Comes Out Of Stealth With a New Twist on Social Search on Techcrunch tonight.

Delver is a social graph search engine that allows you to easyily connect with people.

Delver is attempting to solve two key search-related problems:

The first is that current search engines do not take into account the identity of the searcher.
The second is that current search engines do not allow users to search for information created and referenced by their own social graph.

Delver seems to be part of the first wave of social graph tools that will allow you to manage, grow and track your social graph.

Social Media Content

I am stilling sifting through all the blogs I read and information I gather on a clear definition in my mind of what describes all the content I generate around the Internet.

My social graph is a definition of my relationships and my communication with these people.

I have been reading more on the social media index and how you can rate someone using this methodology based upon several key areas:

• Blogs
• Multi-Format
• Mini-Updates
• Business Cards
• Visual
• Favourites
• Flexible weighting
  

However this addresses highly public organizations or people with distinct presence. I have a blog / site that I maintain, but I am no means Techcrunch.

What sort of definition describes me and the content I publish all over the place at:

• Social Networks
• Video Sharing Sites
• Image & Picture Sharing Sites
• Social Bookmarking Sites
• And much more

What single definition describes my user generated content distributed all over the Internet?

Once I can define I can continue to define a metric and ultimately a measurement of this presence.

Definition of My Social Graph

I keep talking about what my single social interface, which I have been wrestling with as part of my social graph. Figured I better clarify for some of you what the social graph is?

A social graph consists of who an individual is connected to based on the type of connections, such as work, friendship, interests, and location.

I am still grasping the definition of my social graph as I participate more and more on social networks and in the social media space.

In my single social interface definition I try to define communication with my social graph in another perspective based upon Individuals, Network, and Public.

That could be a mix of many different people across my social graph.

I am also still fumbling with how all my content and information fits into this picture and where does it show on my social graph as I create, share and collaborate within my social graph?

It is great to see different people perspectives on the social graph how they work to define it as well.

Pownce the New Sharing Application

I went ahead and signed up for Pownce tonight, they were coming out of private BETA tonight right at midnight. So who can refuse such a trendy launch....

I also got a glimpse of their site as they were making changes I assume and it was minus the CSS style sheet. I cleared my cache and reloaded to see if it came around but it didn't. They have a really nice looking site.

For those of you who don't know Pownce is a application where you can send music, photos, messages, links, events, and more. You can do it all on our web site, or install a lightweight desktop software that lets you get out of the browser.

It is a pretty interesting little application that allows you to import your contacts from your major networks using Plaxo it looks like.

I like how they describe how Pownce is made, check it out.

They have an API as well that lets you access the user information, friends, and notes for the account.

Still wrapping my head around how this fits into your daily activity, but I am sure it will come to me. Looks like it is another piece of the puzzle in helping me get control of my social graph and further complete my single social interface.

Will share information about it as it comes out.