During the weekly sync-up call that Marc Smith and I had this morning, he mentioned that NodeXL, formerly known as NetMap, has been posted at http://www.codeplex.com/NodeXL. NodeXL is an open source add-in for Microsoft Excel 2007 that provides network analysis and visualization capabilities.
So, I spent about 2 hours playing with NodeXL and found some interesting (though not too surprising) results based on actual usage data that had been exported from:
First, the NodeXL graph for my email-based network is shown below, which is based on all emails that I've sent and received during the past 6 weeks. The more frequently I communicate with someone via email, the closer his/her dot would be to mine on the graph and similarly for everyone else who frequently communicates with each other.
As expected, I've communicated very frequently with a cluster of people (mostly at Telligent) who have also communicated very frequently with each other. However, I've just about as frequently communicated with many more people (the purple dots below mine), who have not communicated with each other through me. (In case you're curious, the small clusters of red dots in the lower-left and lower-right corners are separate groups of related mailing lists that I subscribe to.) I had set a goal when I started my job at Telligent a couple of months ago to spend about 2/3 of my time interfacing with external people and 1/3 with internal people. The graph above affirms that I'm on course, and if I really need to get more exact, I can utilize Excel to do the calculations for me.
Well, that's all nice and good, but what about the network graph(s) for other people at Telligent, whom I care about (or should care more about)? I can't access their emailboxes! And this is where the benefits of using Community Server Evolution instead of or in conjunction with email and then integrating analytics and reporting into the environment will start to bear some rather interesting fruit. The NodeXL graphs below are based on usage data (friending requests/accepts, blog posts/comments, forums posts/replies, wiki posts/updates, etc.) from Telligent's intranet during the past 6 weeks. There are many ways to slice/dice and visualize the data, which I'll blog about in the future, but I just wanted to get a sense for how a few specific people compare with each other in terms of their "Enterprise 2.0 Rating" within our intranet.
Of course, I started with myself. Again, not too surprising since I tend to communicate and interact with just 20-30 Telligent people even though I have 59 colleagues in my intranet Friends List.
Next, I looked at the graph of Sarah Denman, who started in our Sales team only a couple of weeks ago. It's great to see that she has already interacted online with 15 or so Telligent people.
Next, I wondered about our CEO, Rob Howard. His graph shows that he has been at or near the center of our intranet's social network .. as he should be. It also shows that he has interacted with about 1/4 of the Telligent people - not a surprise since he really shouldn't have to be involved in everything at every level. So, whom does he delegate to?
Our CTO, Jason Alexander, for one. :-) Now, that's what I call coverage!
And our VP of WW Sales, Tom Edwards. He has really good coverage as well!
Lastly, our VP of Marketing, Ken Vernon. Although Ken's coverage is significantly less than Jason's or Tom's, it's really not a knock on Ken since he has more of an external focus much like me, which is likely why his coverage profile looks a bit like mine. I would actually be a bit concerned if Ken's coverage looks more like Jason's or Tom's.
Anyway, I'm just scratching the surface here! But I hope that you now have a bit more appreciation for the power of social analytics. I'll continue to blog in-depth about this topic for the foreseeable future.
So, what questions do you have about usage and interactions on your intranet or your customer community site for which you would like to have quantifiable metrics and visualizations?
Posted
Dec 16 2008, 05:46 PM
by
Lawrence Liu