Thursday, February 13, 2003

Why social networks are more robust than computer networks. Clive sez: "An academic recently studied the topology of human, social networks, and compared it to the Net. His conclusion? Though we love to talk about the similarities between social behavior and our computer networks, they're quite different. In real life, highly social people gravitate towards other highly social people. But on the Net, highly-connected computers are connected to zillions of dead ends. Online, computers don't really care who they're hooked up with -- but humans? We want to hang with the cool crowd, heh. This epiphany has some really interesting implications for security: "In social networks, where popular people are friends with other popular people, diseases spread easily, said Newman. At the same time, however, this type of network has a small central set of people that the disease can actually reach. 'They support epidemics easily, but... the epidemic is limited in who it can reach,' he said. The opposite is true for the Internet, the Web and biological networks, said Newman. This makes these types of networks more vulnerable to attack than social networks are." Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 5:06:00 AM    comment []

Ecosystem of Networks. My post on Distribution of Choice was a little long winded, so let me sum up: Not all links are created equal Conversational relationships are not scale-free Applying these principles reveals a Network Ecosystem Model that helps us understand the political economy of weblogs Network Size Description Distribution Political Network ~1000s Blogs as mass media Power-law (scale-free) Social Network ~150 Blogging Classic Bell-curve (random) Creative Network ~12 Blogs as dinner conversation Dense (equal) A link to a site you read isnt the same as a link to someone you know through their blog or someone you actively collaborate with.  After reviewing data of work relationships, information flows and knowledge exchanges from hundreds of consulting assignments inside Fortune 2000 organizations Valdis Krebs did not see much evidence of power laws in this data. His data is of confirmed ties [both persons agreed/recognized their mutual interactions/flows/relationships] from a worldwide pool of clients dating back to 1988. Of course he found some people were better connected than others, but the extreme hubs found in power law networks just were not evident. Adapting a famous line from the movie "Blazing Saddles" Valdis concluded: "Power Law? There ain't no stinkin' power law in this data!" This conclusion fits well with Duncan Watts observation that the more you ratchet up the requirements for a link, recognized connections diminish, and the less you see power laws.  Which makes all the noise about Power-laws off target.  I had the pleasure of having a dinner conversation with Clay last night.  Yes, he should start a weblog, but he has his own reasons for not doing so yet, which I'll let him explain for himself.  But studying the structure of the weblog ecosystem does not have to be an anthropological exercise.  Its a wonderful testament to the energy of blogspace that Dave Sifry created a new index to reveal the neglected tail of the Power-law distribution of a Political Network.  But we don't have to screw the Power-law or use statistical techniques to reveal a different distribution.  This approach has tremendous value in allowing new cream to arise to the top.  Both innovations are still attempting to filter the wrong set of data and to generalize all of blogspace.  What matters isnt breaking these laws, but the perspective that weblogs, aside from the Political Network publishing dynamics, are communication tools for group forming in Social Networks and Creative Networks.  Meg asks the right question: what if these tools can expand our capacities?  What if 12 and 150 become averages instead of limits?  Other people are thinking in similar terms from an anthropological perspective as participants.  The Social and Creative Networks are where the new and valuable interpersonal connections are being made. In the coming days I will build upon the Network Ecosystem Model to explain the Distribution of Influence and Distribution of Social Capital.  My head hurts, but this is getting interesting. [Ross Mayfield's Weblog] 5:04:39 AM    comment []

Another Way to Get RSS Feeds on Your PDA!. FOAF "The newsreader NewsMonster has the ability to use Friend of a Friend data. It also provides for export to PDA's and reads all versions of RSS. Interesting, I'll have to download it and play with it a bit when I have some time. As for FOAF, I think the idea has some potential uses. However, as I understand it, FOAF metadata should be stored as a separate file. I'd like the ability to place it in the HEAD section of a document, as well as pointing to another file." [Catalogablog] This is what I'm talking about! I really believe that RSS news aggregators are a much better way to keep up with your favorite sites on the go, especially on small devices. The overhead is much less, even in a 3G or WiFi environment. I'm snowed under at work for the next week, but I really want to try NewsMonster on my Clie! [The Shifted Librarian] 4:58:58 AM    comment []