Team, Community, and Network connections are more than just "social" and definitely not the same

As I had described in a blog entry a few weeks ago, being “social” is just one aspect of the modern business life cycle. In this post, I highlight several different kinds of connections that people may have within teams, communities, and networks that are more than just social and not the same. These differences in type and strength of connections can have a significant impact on the patterns of interaction and communication between people, one example of which I recently blogged about in terms of “the true value of Enterprise 2.0 tools for CXOs.” The measurement, analysis, and reporting of activities within networking, community, and collaboration environments, when complemented with the context of relevant connection types and strengths, may reveal valuable insights for why someone had acted a particular way. Having a deeper understanding of the “why” enables one to make decisions more quickly and confidently, which naturally leads to competitive advantages in business as much as it does in life because meaningful actions can only follow informed decisions. [Wow, that’s probably the longest compound sentence I’ve ever written! :-)]

The social (i.e. purely person-to-person) connections that have been popularized by networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are as follows:

• User1 is friend of User2: reciprocal and symmetric
• User1 is following User2: non-reciprocal and asymmetric
• User1 is followed by User2: non-reciprocal and asymmetric

However, there are other connections between people (albeit less direct) that can be more relevant in certain situations:

• User1 used the same tag as User2
• User1 replied to same forum thread as User2
• User1 edited the same wiki page as User2
• User1 downloaded the same file as User2
• User1 left a comment on the same (User3’s) profile as User2
• Any combination of the above as well as several more types of connections

In addition, as Jyri Engeström pointed out 4+ years ago in his “Why some social network services work and others don't” post and then followed up in his “What makes a good social object” post about 2 years ago, there are many types of person-to-object connections that may be worthwhile to track. A couple of examples are:

• User1 is following #hashtag2
• User1 is friend of SourceCodeAssembly2()

As more and more companies in the Web 2.0 era attempt to “learn and profit from online friendships,” it’s becoming strategically important for businesses as well as people to understand the nature of these connections – how they form, when they change, and how they grow. [Warning: Self-serving verbiage follows!] Telligent (my current employer), with primary research spearheaded by our Chief Social Officer (Dr. Marc Smith) and agile development by our Harvest product team, has invested significantly during the past 2+ years in this problem/opportunity space and will continue to do so. I am extremely about the ongoing R&D that we’re doing in collaboration with key customers, partners, and researchers in both industry and academia.