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I’ve Got Friends in Low Places, but Who Cares?

Each week I look forward to Max Kalehoff’s Friday “Online Spin” column for MediaPost (go here for the RSS feed). I can usually count on Max’s columns to offer unique insight on the intersection of brand marketing, WOM and Web 2.0.

In this week’s column, “Please, No More Friends,” Max introduces the concept of “friendship overload,” which, according to him, results in part from “blurry, if not arbitrary assignments of the term [friend].” I happen to agree.

On most social networks (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) a simple click of the mouse allows a member to connect or become “friends” with another member of that network. Unlike the “real” world, where the term friend is typically reserved for people with whom we have a personal and prolonged relationship, members of social networks can easily befriend virtually anyone, regardless of the depth or length of the interaction. Many social networks even allow you to import your address book to recruit friends, thus lowering the bar on “friendship” to anyone with whom you’ve exchanged e-mails at some point in the past.

Case in point, earlier this week I received an invitation to connect on LinkedIn from a person whose name I did not recognize. After an exhaustive search of my computer hard drive, I realized that I’d interviewed this person for a job more than a year earlier, with no subsequent follow-up. Clearly, this person could not be considered a “friend” no matter how loose the definition of the term.

While I don’t have a real issue with this phenomenon on true “social” networks like MySpace, I think that people must be more judicious when it comes to their profile and reputation on business-focused networking sites. Ultimately, the value of an individual’s business-focused network is determined by the level of discretion they apply when deciding whether or not to connect (or LinkIn, or whatever verb the platform uses). While a “500″ next to someone’s name on LinkedIn might look impressive, it’s very unlikely that they have deep relationships with all (or even most) of the people in their network. Conversely, a “10″ next to your name on LinkedIn might suggest that you are not well-networked, but if those 10 people are themselves well-connected, you’re likely better off than the person with the 500.

I tend to be pretty discerning with regard to who I’ll connect with on LinkedIn. As a result, the number of connections that appears next to my name is a lot lower than it might be if I accepted every invitation I received (or, if I carpet-bombed every contact in my address book, for that matter). Thus, the number by itself is meaningless… Does your network help you further your career? Identify new job opportunities? Help with strategic introductions? On the flip side, are you connecting with people that you can mentor, or otherwise help advance? If the answer to these questions is “no,” then your network of “friends” or connections is not unlike a bottle cap collection… fun and easy to amass, but ultimately of little value.

Viewed from another angle, the number of friends or connections that appears next to one’s name offers little information about the individual, other than their inclination to solicit connections. While less important on a true “social” network, this does make it difficult to distinguish the relative “juice” of individuals in business-focused networks. For example, if two individuals applying for a job both have 100 connections on LinkedIn, how do you determine which one is the better candidate?

Admittedly, a person’s LinkedIn count should not be the sole determinant of their viability for a position. However, I do believe that it is possible (and relatively easy) to create a measure of “connectedness” that is far more relevant and informative than a simple incremental count. We need only turn back the clock nine years or so for a blueprint…

As has been well chronicled, search engine listings in the late 1990s suffered from a severe lack of relevancy. On sites like Lycos, Excite and others, natural search rankings were still based almost exclusively on keyword density. At that time, it was possible for webmasters to game search results for a keyword phrase like “digital camera” by simply repeating that phrase multiple times in the page copy. As a result, searchers on these sites had a difficult time distinguishing good from bad sites. In a word, the results lacked relevancy.

Google tackled this problem with the introduction of its PageRank algorithm, which considered not only a site’s relevance to the search keyword, but also the relative authority of the pages that linked to that site for that keyword. The result for Google users was dramatically more relevant organic search results.

LinkedIn could apply a derivation of this same philosophy in order to provide a better measure of connectedness for members of its network. For starters, they could provide more relevance and context by creating a score that factors in not only the number of connections established, but also the recommendations that an individual has received, and the relative authority of the people giving those recommendations (let’s call this Part 1 of the algorithm). For even greater precision, LinkedIn could weight the connections that an individual has established, such that connections with individuals with a high Part 1 score are more highly-valued than those from people at the lower end of the scale (this is Part 2 of the algorithm). The “master” algorithm would distill Part 1 and Part 2 into a score that provides a relative measure of connectedness (“juice”) in the LinkedIn network. For LinkedIn members seeking a high score, the emphasis would then shift from making a lot of connections to making the right connections, and establishing truly meaningful relationships with connected individuals that are likely to provide a recommendation.

As Max Kalehoff points out in his article, “When online friendships begin to scale artificially — such as randomly or via the all-too-easy click of a button — they run the risk of overwhelming us, causing the aggregate value of deeper social-network friendships to erode.” As the social networking space gets increasingly crowded – with players like Plaxo, and even Classmates.com and Reunion.com putting a stake in the ground – these networks (the business-focused ones, in particular) will need to find a way to counteract this erosion and distinguish themselves in order to grab enough market share to survive. It is inconvenient for online users to establish and maintain profiles on all of these platforms, so, ultimately, the one or two that survive will be those that offer true value for their users and the members of their networks.

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4 August 2007 | Web 2.0, e-commerce, facebook, google, linkedin, marketing, myspace, search, social networking, technology, wom, word of mouth marketing | Comments