Social Networking Analysis

Social Network Analysis is the study of social  networks and their application to solve real life problems.  In my graduate student days long  time back, I had  spent some time studying network marketing organizations like Amway.  One of the ideas emerging in those days was that exploiting ones network for business has some  positive externalities, due to which people get additional non monetary benefits, and were therefore willing to work for a lot less. After all these years, got back into this area largely due to the drive and interest of my colleague Devesh.

Modern day applications of social network analytics are more sophisticated.  Apart from the  HR problem I shared  in my previous post, here are a few other interesting applications:

TELECOMS --  Social Network Analytics can be used to manage customer churn. Basically an individuals churn likelihood goes up if someone from his/her network attrites.  Consequently it is more important to retain individuals who can influence more people through their network ( more on the quantification in a later post). This is one application where social network analysis  does not depend on social media data but rather on usage data.

PEER RECOMMENDATION ( Netflix type problems) -- For  situations where a business is trying to recommend a product/service to a customer, leveraging the preferences of  the individuals social network could come in handy.  This is very relevant for cross sell and upsell type marketing campaigns.

COUNTER TERRORISM  ---  Law enforcements authorities are using Social Media data to develop social networks and track terrorism suspects using these networks.

Here are some commonly used data sources:

• Social Media
• Customer Usage data (telecoms)
• Purchase Pattern
• Survey

For commonly used tools for doing social network analysis check this link on wikipedia

Here is a good reference on the topic Social Network Analysis (Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences)