Social Network Analysis and Mining for Business Applications

Abstract

Social network analysis has gained significant attention in recent years, largely due to the success of online social networking and media-sharing sites, and the consequent availability of a wealth of social network data. In spite of the growing interest, however, there is little understanding of the potential business applications of mining social networks. While there is a large body of research on different problems and methods for social network mining, there is a gap between the techniques developed by the research community and their deployment in real-world applications. Therefore the potential business impact of these techniques is still largely unexplored.In this article we use a business process classification framework to put the research topics in a business context and provide an overview of what we consider key problems and techniques in social network analysis and mining from the perspective of business applications. In particular, we discuss data acquisition and preparation, trust, expertise, community structure, network dynamics, and information propagation. In each case we present a brief overview of the problem, describe state-of-the art approaches, discuss business application examples, and map each of the topics to a business process classification framework. In addition, we provide insights on prospective business applications, challenges, and future research directions. The main contribution of this article is to provide a state-of-the-art overview of current techniques while providing a critical perspective on business applications of social network analysis and mining.

A Framework for Developing Social Networks Enabling Systems to Enhance the Transparency and Visibility of Cross-border Food Supply Chains

“…Enterprises and Government Agencies Though in early stages, social networking technologies and mobile social applications are gaining wide adoption in enterprises and government agencies to engage with business partners, customers, prospects and the general public [6], [8], [9], [11], [13], [22], [23], [25], [28]- [30], [36], [38], [40], [41], [43], [46], [47], [49], [52], [53], [59], [69], [73], [82], [83], [92]. Gartner presents a full list of potential business applications of social software in its hype cycle report, such as social customer relationship management, social commerce, social shopping, social learning, social network payment, social business process management and social government management [40].…”

“…Issues on how to use social networking technologies in different enterprise and government applications and integrate them with other emerging technologies have been investigated in the research community [6], [8]. C.J.…”

“…Privacy and security issues are discussed in [9] to facilitate third-party applications to use private profile data and activity data in social networks in controllable ways. F. Bonchi et al provide an overview for identifying problems and challenges of using social network analysis and mining methodologies in business applications [6]. Conceptual model of enterprise application system, Social CRM System enabled by social networking and web 2.0 is given in [43].…”

Dynamic Targeting in an Online Social Medium

“…Such concepts make it clear that the dynamic nature of the links plays a key role-the timing and follow on effect of an interaction must be quantified if key players are to be identified. A recent business-oriented survey [6,Section 4] lists network dynamics as a key technical challenge, and the authors in [28] argue that "the temporal aspects of centrality are underepresented. "…”

“…For example, with the (i, j) component relating to walks from node i to node j, [2] counts all dynamic walks of length two that use one edge at time t 1 followed by one edge at time t 2 , -A [3] A [4] A [6] counts all dynamic walks of length three that use one edge at each time t 3 , t 4 and t 6 , in that order. -A [5] A [5] A [9] A [10] counts all dynamic walks of length four that use two edges at time t 5 , and then an edge at time t 9 and finally an edge at time t 10 .…”