Online Analytics: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, LinkedIn.... These are all common social networking sites that millions of people visit everyday. While of course the key benefits to these networks is networking, engaging in conversation, and spreading your influence in the world, that's not where the real "power" of social media may lie.

In fact, those who operate their own websites and use Google Analytics have known the dirty little secret of the online world for some time... data = power.

I don't mean power in some draconian sense of the world, but data is what enables analysis and understanding of behaviour, which then in turn can help you influence that behaviour and monetize it.

There are many sites that an average consumer can use to access online behavioural data, including Google Analytics, HootSuite, and Facebook Insights. There is also a premium class of analytics tools, generally used by enterprise customers including SocialTalk, Radian6, and Spiral16 to name a few. Not sure what the deal is with the sixes in the names, but I assume it would make a good conspiracy theory.

These enterprise class software packages are very powerful, and are getting moreso by the day. Take a look at this video of how Spiral16 can map out the relationship between two political campaigns.



Of course, it's a cool feature to map out a network in 3D, but what real use does it have? This is where it begins to get exciting. This type of technology could previously only be discussed in theoretical networks or carefully controlled studies in universities, but now real data can be used in real time to analyze real networks. This has implications on how we divy up public resources like healthcare, how we target new products, and even how we share news on a natural disaster in the most efficient way.

Nicholas Christakis, a Harvard sociolist specializing in networks explains it all in the following video. It's a long one, so I'll give you the shorthand too.

The most efficient way to spread something through a network is to pick people at random and then ask them to select a friend. That friend will inherently be closer to the center of the network, and that's where you should focus your message/product for most impact.


Nicholas talks about many of these ideas in terms of the flu, but it can apply to anything that spreads through networks including ideas and product innovations.



Net: If you think social media and the web are important to business in the future, I highly suggest you dabble in the analytics space at least part time. As they say in business, 


You Get What You Measure.