The best thing about this dynamic map is that as the year go by you won’t have to draw it. There will tools from companies like Google that just plug in all your data (data they have and data would import). There are of course moral and privacy issues that bubble up here when it comes to the public domain. But for companies who by their own right own all of the information and activity among their employees (email, chat , corporate social networks like Newsgator Social Sites), it makes sense that this would be a great dynamic graph to utilize for increasing collaboration and innovation.

Enjoyed reading your post about the way people are connected (Innovators, etc). Although I agree with what you have written, I believe there is an opportunity to see more value as these graphs change over time. Imagine some of these social networking diagrams within an animation where as time passes the rate of change (change in connections, data in the form of keywords, etc) changes. I think the value is looking at these over time ( the same way meteorologists look at weather patterns over time). Just as in the weather, within social networks there are many variables, and there is a deep complexity with connecting innovators with early adopters. A weather report of sorts is needed to analyze whether an organization is effectively using their workforce and allowing their employees to informally connect with one another. So imagine that within a certain organization a social graph over time shows there is a tremendous amount of activity (chat, email, meetings, etc) with innovators and early adopters but no activity among the early majority. The social graph changes over time might indicate that management has rejected many project proposals for the company to experiment in different technologies. This is the value of looking at social graphs over time (with overlapping data like internal company decisions, company performance reports, employee turnover, press releases, etc). The connectedness in context with other information is the key to showing an organization can be reshaped for the better.

Thanks for your post. I am interested in knowing what you think.

-Mike Gambale