New Twitter Tool Mailana Helps Me Visualize Strong Ties In My Network

To see Mailana live map

Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a piece called "The Inner Circles of 10 Geek Heros" using a tool developer Pete Warden's service Mailana.   The tool is quite fascinating because it combines a light weight social network analysis (see this page to learn more about the methodology) of your twitter friends with search.

Marshall's post will shows the top five people I'm having conversations with on Twitter and who respond to me:

1. Marnie Webb is the co-CEO at Compumentor/TechSoup. You should get to know Marnie; once you do you'll wonder why you waited so long.
2. Amy Gahran, see Jeffrey Levy's list above. Gahran has a lot of conversation with a lot of awesome people.
3. Jonathon D. Colman does SEO for REI.
4. Beth Dunn is a consultant and MBA candidate.
5. Dr. Mani is an Indian entrepreneur and heart surgeon.

I don't understand by @ntenhross (Holly Ross, Director of NTEN) and @amyrsward (Netsquared community builder) aren't in my cloud. I think it's because they're not in the malina database, but you should follow them.  There's lots of friends in my network that you explore.  Here's a mosaic:

Get your twitter mosaic here.

What's interesting to me is looking at my map and identifying sub-communities or spokes and hubs.  They identify different nooks and crannies of my network.  For example, I can clearly see the Aussies I met or connected with as part of my trip to teach there last year. (Those folks are:@silkcharm, @dnwallace, @edwardharran and @divabat).  I can see in this inner circle at least 8 or 9 hubs.

Speaking of Austraila, I also met Gary P Hayes after I session I attended at the Sydney Writers Festival.   He left a comment pointing to an excellent post called "Twitter Long Tail - Broadcastization & Pre-Twitter Reputation."  The post is chocked fulled of statistical anaylsis answering this questions:

Ever since I joined Twitter (GaryPHayes) I have been fascinated by the subtle ‘etiquette’ of being followed, following and timely updates (as well as the enormous growth and creative potential twitter now affords). It is also interesting watching those traditional media brands and celebrities with a non-twitter and web 2.0 online reputation enter into the fray. What effect do they have? Do they corrupt this young new channel before it has found it’s own feet or is the invasion of old brands and celebs part of its maturation?

I can also click on a map of someone in my network, KDPaine, for example, and see who her inner circle is.  I can also search by keyword and she who she talks to about that.  For example, I searched KD Paine's map on the word "metrics"  Presumbly, because these people are talking to KD Paine (and she is responding) and the tweets contain the word "metrics" - these might be people I'd want to connect with because I'm interested in this topic.

1.		jasonfalls
2.		kanter
3.		serena
4.		silkcharm
5.		curtmonash
6.		thornley
7.		mcp85
8.		dough
9.		andrewcherwenka

There's something just a little bit creepy about this.  While we've opted to have all these conversations in public, the tools let people track more granular information about you - who you talk to and what you talk about it.  

What's your takeaway from this tool?  How would you use it?  Do you think it raises some privacy and security concerns?

Comments

[rjleaman]

Beth, this is fascinating! And I'm struck by the sudden realization that fragmentation of online activity can give us a comforting illusion of some privacy. (Perhaps "privacy" is not quite the word - rather, an illusion of relative anonymity?)

When "personal" information is collected and charted in this way, yes, it feels slightly creepy - even knowing that there's no information here that we haven't volunteered to share in a public forum. This post is a good reminder to give some thought to where the aggregation of social media data might be headed in the long term.

That said, it certainly seems like there should be some practical application for Mailana, beyond the insights into our own conversational circles and a new way to find like-minded folks. I'll need to think on that!

[Lateef]

Excellent tool! I just heard about a very similar one called 'Social Collider' check this one out too: Social Collider Certainly - no where near as pretty...but they're addressing a similar space.

[frank]

Great info Beth. I don't see you in my circle yet, I’ll have to work on that.

I'd agree that it's a bit scary that we are so 'out there' ... I guess I'd rather not think about that much :) and just make sure that what ever I'm putting 'out there' is not personally damaging.

It would be cool to see a Facebook app like this ... though I’d bet Facebook would need to build it.

My initial reaction to the graph was similar with respect to seeing the 'spokes' or mini networks of people in my network who are highly connected. It’s pretty cool to see. Now I need to figure out what to do with this new found information.

http://twitter.com/franswaa

[Joitske Hulsebosch]

Hi Beth, do you also have the experience that you have much more intensive twitter contacts with people in your same timezone?