2009-Social computing-Analyzing social media networks

Analyzing Enterprise Social Media Networks
Marc Smith, Derek L. Hansen, Eric Gleave

Abstract— Broadening adoption of social media applications illustrate the ways people specialize in different patterns of
within the enterprise offers a new and valuable data source for connection, identifying that person as occupying and
insight into the social structure of organizations. Social media performing a particular "role" (or roles) in the organization.
applications generate networks when employees use features to Examples of roles include “answer people" [3] who
create "friends" or "contact" networks, reply to messages from disproportionately provide the answers to questions asked in
other users, edit the same documents as others, or mention the message board environments, "discussion people" who engage
same or similar topics. The resulting networks can be analyzed in extended exchanges of messages in large and populous
to reveal basic insights into an organization's structure and threaded discussions [4], "discussion starters" who demonstrate
dynamics. The creation and analysis of sample social media
influence over the topics discussed by the "discussion people"
network datasets is described to illustrate types of enterprise
networks and considerations for their analysis.
[5], "influential" people who are well connected to others who
are more highly connected than they are, and boundary
Keywords- Social Network, Enterprise, Social Media, Analysis, spanners who bridge between unconnected subgroups [6]. The
Social Graph, Organization ability to identify individuals within an organization with
particular network properties can be applied to improve
I. INTRODUCTION enterprise search applications, provide better reporting and
Social network data sets are generated by many tools, not ranking services, and can be used to guide management by
just those called "social networking services." A rich new producing reports on the rates of internal connection within and
source of social network data is created as enterprises and across groups in an organization. Changes over time can also
organizations adopt social media tools like message boards, be tracked to better understand the impact of external or
blogs, wikis, friend and contact networks, activity streams and internal events such as changes in employee size or makeup.
file, photo, and video shares. Enterprise social media Following a review of related work, we document a
applications bring applications found on the public Internet into growing number of different social networks being generated
the confines of an institution's firewall. These tools serve as as enterprises adopt social media applications. We note the
detailed records of social networks, providing maps of the various properties of these networks and describe the
structure of social connections within an organization. Data construction and application of social network metrics for
captured from social media tools also create networks reporting on the quality, health and leadership of social media
connecting individuals with artifacts (e.g., digital artifacts) and spaces. We conclude with a discussion of emerging forms of
groups. While social networks have always existed in human social network data sets, potential concerns with using this
institutions, only recently have such richly detailed networks data, and the directions for future work.
been made available in machine readable format as a natural
byproduct of interaction between people and their artifacts. II. RELATED WORK
Extracting, processing, and analyzing these networks can Social network analysis has a long history and connection
reveal important patterns in the structure and dynamics of the to the study of organizations and businesses. Early social
institutions that adopt these tools. Network analysis is the network literature was built on manually collected and
sociological application of mathematical graph theory to data processed data about social ties. Researchers would typically
representing sets of relationships. Social network structures are observe or survey organization members, asking each to list
created when people connect to one another through a range of those they came in contact with regularly for a variety of tasks
ties. Network analysis is a set of methods for calculating and purposes. The prohibitive cost of this approach was a
measures that describe a population of "nodes" (representing major limiting factor in the widespread application of social
people and other entities) and their "edges" or relationships to network analysis in enterprises and organizations. Despite these
one another. These metrics can describe the overall shape and challenges, a healthy subfield developed around social network
size of a network as well as describe the location and analysis of large organizations, as evidenced by the growing
connection pattern of each node (or vertex) in the network. body of literature written for business audiences [7-9]. Social
Tools that visualize networks can reveal additional insights, network analysis and metrics are described in [10].
particularly when they integrate visual properties (e.g., node Researchers and practitioners in the subfield of enterprise
size or color) with network metrics (e.g., degree, betweenness social network analysis have documented the impact social
centrality) [1,2]. structure has on outcomes of interest to organizations and
When applied to enterprise social media networks, network employees. For example, Cross and colleagues illustrate
analysis metrics and visualizations can highlight important several practical applications of social network analysis for
people, events, and subgroups within an organization. Each corporations and other large organizations, highlighting
person in the organization is connected to a potentially differences between healthy and under-performing divisions
different number and set of other people. Network metrics and the value of organization spanning connections [7-8].
Identify applicable sponsor/s here

Others like Burt provide compelling evidence that individuals never meet or occupy the same locations at the same time [16].
who bridge structural holes are promoted faster than others [6]. The term “hyperties” echoes the attention Goffman gave to “tie
signs” that indicated a connection between two people.
Researchers and practitioners have begun to use
Hyperties, unlike analog tie signs, are machine authored based
automatically captured social media data to create and analyze on a range of statistical associations and similarities.
social networks. The everyday use of social media tools for
day-to-day activities generates rich network data without To date, analysis of social networks has remained largely
having to explicitly ask each employee about their personal an academic endeavor conducted by PhDs trained to apply its
connections. Researchers interested in enterprise social specialized concepts and software to answer hypotheses of
networks have begun to explore these networks. For example, interest primarily to academics. We envision a time when
Perer and Smith [11] provided a tool that allowed employees to social network analysis is also used by organizational
visualize their corporate email collection. The resulting images managers, online community administrators, and interested
highlight structures of communication activity across the individuals to inform their decisions about practical real-world
organizational chart of the corporation. Others have related problems. For this to become a reality, tools and strategies must
email usage and network characteristics to individual be developed that support the complex process of making sense
productivity [12, 13]. Researchers can now move beyond email of the many networks that are created by social media tools.
and the very real concerns about research use of private
communication to take full advantage of the network data In this paper we provide a framework for characterizing the
many types of enterprise social media networks. Understanding
created as a byproduct of the use of other more explicitly
public enterprise social media tools such as wikis, forums, these networks is vital in educating future network analysts and
in designing tools that support their analysis and visualization.
blogs, microblogs, and status updates.
We next discuss methods of analyzing and using that data in
Although literature on enterprise social media networks is the goal of contributing to the development of additional
relatively limited, there has been a surge of research that network metrics, analytical tools, and theories that take full
examines social networks based on the use of social media advantage of the many novel social media data sources
tools in non-enterprise settings. A series of papers have available. We conclude with a review of concerns about the
documented the ways contributors to social media repositories potential misuse of these types of data.
(e.g., Usenet) have distinct patterns of contribution and
connection to other contributors [3-5]. These patterns are III. TYPES OF ENTERPRISE SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS
evidence of specialization of behavior in these social spaces. The use of social media generates a number of networks.
A separate line of research has focused on providing tools In most organizations, people adopt a patchwork quilt of social
that help make sense of social network data through media tools. The use of each tool may generate one or more
visualizations. Some tools such as NodeXL automatically social networks of interest. Public and private email
extract social media networks and allow users to perform a set discussions, message boards, "friends", "buddies", and
of core operations that measure and map the resulting dataset "contacts", wikis, blogs, and file and photos stores, along with
[1]. Other tools developed by Viegas and colleagues use non- comments and readership records, (among others) all generate
graph-based visualizations to make sense of social media data graph structures that can be extracted and analyzed through the
such as email [14] and wikis [15]. core methods and measures of social network analysis. The
resulting social media networks can vary in important ways. In
Eagle and Macy have been analyzing the “call graph” this section we outline a few important dimensions on which
created when people use their telephones and mobile phones to these networks vary including: unimodal/multimodal,
call one another. Their research on a data set containing all the direct/indirect, symmetry, and weighted/unweighted.
phone calls in the United Kingdom for a six-week period
highlights different patterns of calling. They find that A. Network Properties Related to Nodes (i.e., Vertices)
economically prosperous regions display higher diversity of Unimodal networks link only one type of entity (i.e., nodes)
connections than economically marginal regions. together. In standard social network analysis all nodes
represent people. However, unimodal networks may connect
A growing area of research involves the application of objects to objects (e.g., wiki pages), collections to collections
mobile or location based sensors to capture evidence of social (e.g., playlists), groups to groups (e.g., corporations), terms to
connections and, by extension, social networks. Sandy terms, locations to locations, activities to activities, etc. The
Pentland and the SenseNetworks company are building tools links of unimodal networks may be based on direct associations
that use cell phone towers’ ability to collect data from cell (e.g., wiki pages linked together based on hypertext) or indirect
phones to map the locations of groups of people over time. associations (e.g., wiki pages linked together based on number
The resulting patterns are used to group people into “tribes” of co-editors). A number of standard network metrics such as
based on common, overlapping habits. Even if two people have degree, betweenness centrality, eigenvector centrality,
never met, their common use of certain kinds of spaces and closeness centrality, and measures of network density can be
transit systems soon build a link based on their shared visits to used to characterize these networks.
the same kinds of restaurants, theaters, office buildings, and
highways or rail lines. These connections are examples of what Multimodal networks are composed of mixtures of entities.
Counts and Smith call “hyperties,” or links that are created For example, people, documents, and companies might all co-
between people when machines find associations between exist in the same network graph. A common type of
people based on common locations or activities even if people multimodal network is a bimodal network that connects people

to a set of similar objects. An example of a bimodal network is Many of the standard network metrics do not apply to
shown in Figure 1, where people are linked to wiki pages they multimodal networks (e.g., betweenness centrality), although
have edited. some apply if appropriately interpreted (e.g., degree) and other,
more specialized, metrics have been devised for common types
of multimodal networks such as bimodal networks.
Multimodal networks can be reduced to uni-modal
networks. For example, "people to document to people"
networks can be transformed into "people to people" networks
and/or "document to document" networks. An example of a
network transformed from a bi-modal to a single mode is
shown in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 2 shows the person to person
network based on wiki page co-edits. A complementary graph
could be created that connects wiki pages to wiki pages based
on the number of people who have edited both pages. More
generally, this approach can be used to relate objects of all
types (e.g., books, photos, audio recordings) based on social
network ties rather than content indexes or keyword similarity.
Such networks are the raw material for recommender systems:
queries that generate the results of "people who linked to this
document also linked to these documents" or "if you link to this
document, you may want to link to these people".
B. Network Properties Related to Ties (i.e., Edges)
Networks differ in several ways based on the type of ties
that connect nodes to one another, whether the networks are
unimodal or multimodal. These distinctions affect the metrics
Figure 1. Bimodal Wiki Page and Editor Graph. This bimodal graph shows and maps generated from them, as well as their interpretation.
employees (circles) and wiki pages (squares). Edge thickness indicates Although these graph types are described in social network
number of edits to a page. Node size is based on degree (i.e., large squares
have been edited by many people; large circles have edited many pages). analysis textbooks, they have not been related to social media
Nodes with less than 2 degrees have been removed. Thus, employee e_2132 network datasets in any systematic way.
has a high degree, but only edits pages that nobody else has edited. In contrast,
employee 2105 edits pages that are edited by many people. Direct graphs describe explicit relationships between
entities such as social networking site’s ability to friend or
follow another person. Indirect graphs describe relationships
between entities based on implicit relationships such as the
relationship between people based on wiki page co-edits as
shown in Figure 2. Another example would be two people
connected because they are members of the same group even
though they may not know one another.
In symmetric graphs, the relationship tie is reciprocal
between the two entities that are connected. For example, in
many social networking sites (e.g., Facebook) a Friendship
relationship is symmetric since if Person A has “friended”
Person B then Person B has also “friended” Person A. In
contrast, other networks are asymmetric, suggesting that a tie
from Person A to Person B is not necessarily reciprocated. For
example, Person A may follow Person B on the Twitter micro-
blogging service without Person B following Person A.
Another example is the reply network created in discussion
forums and email lists. Asymmetric graphs are often
represented using arrows on the edges of a graph.
Figure 2. Unimodal Wiki Page Editor Graph. This unimodal graph shows
Weighted graphs allow for the differentiation of edges
only people. It is based on a transformed version of the data represented in
Figure 1. People who have coedited at least 5 of the same wiki pages are based on some criteria of interest (e.g., number of messages
connected with an edge. Thicker edges represent more co-edited pages. Node exchanged or posted). They are often represented visually as
radius is based on degree. Nodes are darker if they have a higher betweenness thicker or darker lines connecting nodes as was done in Figures
centrality. Note that e_2105 shows up prominently in this graph, but e_2132 1 and 2. All edges in an unweighted graph are the same. An
doesn't show up at all, since he only edits pages others have not edited. Thus, example of an unweighted edge would be a friendship tie in a
each graph highlights different individuals who may play important and
distinct roles, as well as their relationship to each other. social network site.

Table I. Social Network Types (for person to person unimodal networks)
Direct / Symmetry Edge Examples
Indirect Weight
Direct Symmetric Unweighted Person A & B are friends or contacts (e.g., social networking friends as in Facebook or LinkedIn)
Direct Symmetric Weighted Person A & B are friends and friendship “strength” (i.e., weight) is measured by number of communications.
Direct Asymmetric Unweighted Person A follows person B (e.g., Twitter); Person A rated person B
Direct Asymmetric Weighted Person A reads or comments on Person B’s content (e.g., blog, forum post). Weight = # of reads or comments.
Indirect Symmetric Unweighted Person A & B are both members of a group or network
Indirect Symmetric Weighted Person A & B have both edited a document (e.g., wiki page) or visited a location; Weight = # of edits or visits.
Indirect Asymmetric Unweighted Person A joined a group before Person B joined the group
Indirect Asymmetric Weighted Person A edited a document before Person B edited the same document

Table 1 shows examples of the various combinations of IV. ANALYZING ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKS
these graph types using unimodal networks that include only
people as the nodes. However, these same properties apply to Making sense of the enormous amount of potential data is a
unimodal networks with other entities (e.g., wiki page to wiki central challenge of social network analysis. It is essential that
page networks), as well as multimodal networks. analysts identify their primary goals and research questions in
order to select appropriate metrics and visualizations. Some of
C. Single and Cumulative Networks the most important social network related questions include:
So far, we have focused on networks created by a single • What kinds of roles are being performed within an
technical platform (e.g., a wiki, a social networking site, a enterprise’s social media repositories?
discussion forum). It is often useful to analyze these networks
because interpretation of the nodes and edges is fairly • Which individuals play important social roles within
straightforward. However, enterprises often use many different an enterprise or organization?
technical platforms making it possible to create cumulative • What subgroups exist? Do connections between
(i.e., hybrid) networks that describe social ties that are captured organizational divisions exist? Who plays the bridge
from usage of multiple technical platforms. For example, a roles that connect otherwise unconnected groups?
single network generated from a corporate system with a single
login can represent the ties between individuals based on their • How do some people convert their contacts to adopt a
wiki co-edits, friendships, discussion forum replies, and new technology or practice more than others?
semantic overlap. Networks where ties can indicate multiple
• How do the overall structures of an enterprise’s social
things (e.g., friendship, co-edits) are called multiplex networks.
networks change after a particular event (e.g., a
Multiplex networks add significant complexity to company social; a round of new hires or layoffs)?
interpretation and analysis as people, threads, blogs, forums,
Almost all forms of analysis and research questions will
documents, topics and keywords all exist in the same data
require the transformation of event data into network data. For
space. The abundance of related network data makes possible
example, logs of who replied to whose message can be
new types of analysis not historically feasible due to the costs
transformed into an edge list with the name of a replier to a
of collecting data. The increased analytic complexity may be
message in one column and the person she is replying to in the
justified and offset by the added insight into how people are
next column. An edge list is a compact representation of a set
connected to others through different media (i.e. wiki,
of relationships that in aggregate forms a network. An
discussion forum, friends). However, the growing challenge
alternative representation of a network is an incidence matrix
imposed by managing many networks over multiple time slices
of entities with the strength of their tie at the intersection of the
highlights the need for better tools to support the workflow and
row and column representing people.
management of large social media network datasets.
With an edge list or matrix representation of a social
Existing tools do allow for analysis of these networks,
network in hand, the next step is to calculate a set of
although a bit of extra work is typically needed. One strategy
descriptive network metrics. These may include the count of
for dealing with cumulative networks is to collapse several
nodes, edges, the overall graph density, and for each node its
networks into one. A directed graph may be used where
in-degree and out-degree (when the network is directed,
undirected ties are translated into two directed ties in opposing
otherwise just degree), clustering coefficient, betweenness
directions. A network tie could be shown between two people
centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality, and tie
(a) if they have co-edited a wiki page AND are friends, (b) if
strength. Not all of these measures can be applied to every type
they have co-edited a wiki page OR are friends, or (c) the
of graph. In particular, multimodal graphs require careful
weight of the tie could depend on the number of different
interpretation of each term. For example, in Figure 1, the
networks that connect two individuals. Another approach to
degree for people indicates the number of unique wiki pages
visually displaying cumulative networks is to show the ties
they have edited, whereas the degree of each wiki page
between people (e.g., forum replies) and change the node
indicates the number of unique authors of that page. A metric
attributes (e.g., size) based on involvement in another medium
such as betweenness centrality does not have a clear definition
(e.g., edits to the wiki). A final approach is to create
in such a network either, since it applies to uni-modal
complementary graphs using similar visual properties and
networks.
labels to help compare them (as was done in Figures 1 and 2).

Table II. Social Roles and Social Metrics
Answer Person Question Person Discussion or Originator Influencer
Comment Person
Degree (In-Degree + Out-Degree) High Low High High Medium
Reply In-Degree Low Low High High High
Reply Out-Degree High Low High Low to Medium Low
Read In-Degree High Low High High High
Social Metrics

Read Out-Degree Medium Low High Low to medium Low
Betweenness Centrality High Low High High High
Neighbors’ Mean Degree Low High High High High
Closeness Centrality Low Low Low High High
Eigenvector Centrality High Low High High High
Clustering Coefficient Low Low High Low to medium Low
Threads Started Low Low Low High Low
Messages Posted High Low High High Low
Reply Messages High Low High Low to medium Low
Days Active High Low High High Low to medium

Once a set of social media networks have been constructed people. Table III shows an example of an aggregate Discussion
and social network measurements have been calculated, the Person score that can be constructed from six ratios. Each of
resulting dataset can be used for many applications. For the terms is a mixture of social metrics, designed to range from
example, they can be used to create reports about community 0 to 1 with larger values indicating a higher probability of
health, comparisons of subgroups, and identification of performing the social role of discussion person.
important individuals, as well as in applications that rank, sort, Table III. Discussion Person Metrics
compare, and search for content and experts.
Term Value Explanation
Sorting and visualizing social media datasets based on Verbosity 1– (Thread count/total posts) More messages per thread
network attributes and metrics helps highlight important is better
documents and individuals. Users and their documents, Initiation 1– (initiated threads/total Ego avoids initiating
threads) threads
messages, comments, and posts have highly variable network Outgoing Outdegree/degree Ego replies to many
properties. For example, some people have a high degree in Attractiveness Indegree/(count of replying Many others reply to Ego
their friends graph while others are sparsely connected. Some authors)
people are connected to others who are well connected to each Connectedness 1–1/mean(neighbors’ degree) Ego’s alters have high
degree, are highly
other creating a clique, while others are connected to people connected
that are relatively unconnected. Mapping network metrics onto Activity (days with a reply post) / Ego’s participation across
visual properties as we have done in Figures 1 and 2 allows (days since last –first visit) possible days
analysts to quickly identify important people, which can then
be explored further by looking at their content. As indicated in Table II, combinations of these metrics can
While social network analysis and visualization is largely a be used to identify other social roles as well. Data from other
manual process due to its complexity, common patterns can be networks (e.g., wikis, social networking sites, semantic terms)
automatically detected to help provide insights into common could also be used to augment these social roles or help
social practices and roles. New conglomerations of network identify roles that span multiple networks. While we have
analysis metrics can help explain many social phenomena focused on identifying social roles, similar techniques could be
including group formation, group cohesion, social roles, used to develop aggregate metrics for a host of other variables
personal influence, and community health. Currently, few such of interest such as community health, group cohesion,
aggregate social metrics have been rigorously developed boundary spanners, etc. Comparing these values across
despite increased interest in them from corporations and communities, groups, and individuals can help managers,
community and organizational analysts. Here we briefly analysts, and individuals know how well they are performing
describe how specific social metrics map to aggregate social compared to others. It can also help managers know when
roles (i.e., types of participants). interventions or education may help improve performance, or
help identify successful individuals and groups so best
Table II shows various social metrics that describe each practices can be identified and shared. Tracking metrics over
node’s activity and network position. Five different social roles time can help managers measure the effect of interventions.
are described in terms of these social metrics. Each social role
can be captured in a composite value that takes various metrics V. DISCUSSION & CONCLUSIONS
into consideration. Composite values must select the most Social media tools provide a wealth of data that can be
important social metrics, scale them appropriately, and weigh transformed into insights about the structure and dynamics of
each individual factor. an enterprise or organization. These insights can be generated
An example formula can provide a basic scoring for through manual analysis and visualization techniques or
"discussion people", a type of contributor who contributes captured, albeit imperfectly, through aggregate social metrics.
heavily to conversations that are often started by others. These Managers and analysts can use these metrics to better
participants are often highly connected to other discussion understand organizational dynamics, allowing them to better

measure the effects of interventions and events. These metrics ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
can also be fed into technical systems like search and sorting We appreciate the assistance of Telligent Systems, the
and social systems like organizational health monitoring and NodeXL development Team, and the students of social media
human resource management. We imagine a future, for analysis classes at the University of Maryland.
example, in which the rate of integration of new employees
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