Social Media Marketing

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c h a p t e r

11

: THE SOCIAL GRAPH

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when Pat’s and Chris’s individual social graphs were momentarily merged through

Chris’s retweet of Pat’s content.

In this way, the social graphs of members can be used to spread content further,

to and between members across distinct social networks whose social graphs intersect.

What does it mean to say that two social networks—or the individual social graphs

contained within them—intersect? Simply, it means that two members, each with their

own social graph, have someone (generally, another person) in common. Looked at

a different way, if Marcia is a member of both Facebook and Twitter, then Marcia’s

personal social graph actually spans two networks, and you could describe Marcia as a

point of intersection between these distinct graphs.

Going further into the larger graphs that span social networks, Facebook intro-

duced “Open Graph”—a set of tools built around its API that makes it easy to con-

nect content (and hence, participants) in social networks or content sites outside of

Facebook with its members inside of Facebook. It works like this: Using a small code

block that can be automatically generated on the Facebook Developer’s pages (see side-

bar), content developers on almost any network can introduce Facebook’s “Like” func-

tion to their content that is outside the Facebook social network. When someone clicks

a Like button associated with a specifi c piece of content that is outside of Facebook,

a status update is published inside Facebook, alerting others who are themselves

Facebook members that this content exists and that someone they know “likes” it. As

people inside (and outside) of Facebook see these notices, and as a result click the Like

button that is associated with that same content, the “like” rating of that content goes

up, furthering its spread.

Managing Your Social Graph

Minggl is a browser-based plug-in that connects your social graphs across the major social net-

works: Using Minggl you can centrally manage your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace

profiles and friends lists. Disclosure: I am a cofounder and shareholder in Minggl.

http://www.minggl.com

The kinds of connections and content visibility offered via Facebook’s Like plugin

can be a very powerful way to increase the visibility of content outside of Facebook—

say, content in your branded community—that is also conveyed into Facebook; for

example, by connecting to your Facebook business page. This capability drives social

graph growth (through content spreading) as much as it is driven by the social graph

itself (through member-initiated friending, for example): New friends can be suggested,

for example, based on the common “likes” of specifi c content or other objects, and can

Managing Your Social Graph

Minggl is a browser-based plug-in that connects your social graphs across the major social net-

works: Using Minggl you can centrally manage your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace

profiles and friends lists. Disclosure: I am a cofounder and shareholder in Minggl.

http://www.minggl.com