• Facebook gagne de l’argent, mais ne rassure personne
• 9 raisons pour les « petites » entreprises d’utiliser les réseaux sociaux
• France 2009 : les réseaux sociaux et la catch-up TV explosent
• Xing, nouveau partenariat de Microsoft pour Outlook 2010
• CNN craint la concurrence des réseaux sociaux sur internet
• Social Networks in a 5 schemas
• Petit rappel : être présent sur les médias sociaux n’est pas un objectif

« The goal of this project is to integrate financial capital, human capital and social network analysis to formally and quantitively define and model social capital. Our interest is to find out what are the real dollar value of social networks. »

That’s the annual dollar value of each person in your email address book at work, according to a novel IBM study published in the Winter Information Systems Conference in February 2009.

IBM researchers, together with researchers in MIT, were looking to scientifically determine how valuable electronic social networks are, such as those in a group that primarily communicates electronically. Using mathematical formulas, honed by observing the email traffic and financial success of 2,600 anonymized far flung IBM consultants collaborating on thousands of projects during one year, researchers found that not all email relationships were equal.

In fact, they found that people with strong email ties with a manager, or had a more diverse circle of correspondents, enjoyed greater financial success than those who were more aloof. Teams with an even mix of genders also performed well financially. Individuals have more diverse networks and thus have more people who are reachable within 2 social steps (i.e., your friends’ friends’ friends.) is valuable. Too intensive communications to the same people have negative impact, perhaps because of the repetitive redundant information exchange.

IBM researchers also discovered that the common expression of ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ really is true — with less success attributed to projects with too many managers. Another finding was that an someone whose behavior in emails reflected a ‘gatekeeper’ mentality (insisted on personally approving or enabling every request to other people or to useful information) was, monetarily, a ‘less valuable’ team member. However, a ‘gatekeeping’ project is valuable, when several other projects need to go through it to obtain key information.

The bottom line, according to researchers? Don’t be annoyed if you get copied on a lot of email. It might just mean that you are a valuable member of a social network. By the same token, don’t be flattered if you are constantly emailed to provide, but not receive, information or access to others. It might just mean that you’re just another node on a colleague’s electronic network, and become a gatekeeper/bottleneck in information flow.

The study suggests that today’s generation — accustomed to electronic social networking practically from the cradle, using instant messaging, texting, emails, Facebook, Myspace, and Second Life — is well positioned for a workplace in which meaningful connections to multiple and diverse social networks spread over a wide area.

While you can’t put a price on friendship, maybe you can put a price on that email buddy from your workplace, after all.

– Ari Fishkind

• Karim Ménard, chef de produit Sharepoint chez Microsoft France, donne sa définition des réseaux sociaux et propose un état des lieux des projets « réseaux sociaux » en entreprise. Dans une autre vidéo, il propose historique des réseaux sociaux depuis match.com
• Dans la troisième vidéo, on deux interviews : celle de Martine Giraudy (gérante de MEG-JIC) et celle de Solange Peyssard (chargé de mission Web dans la SSII Help-line). Elles donnent chacune leur avis sur l’entrée et l’utilisation des réseaux sociaux dans l’entreprise.

En attendant de le savoir, je vous invite à consulter le chat de Eric Delcroix (son blog) sur cette question, organisé avec le journal belge Le Soir.

Et vous, dans votre société, on a interdit Facebook ?