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SOCIAL A
PPLICATIONS D
RIVE E
NGAGEMENT
facilitates the creation of a secondary social graph within Facebook based on your clos-
est friends or must trusted advisors. Why the interest in Top Friends? Read on.
Within Facebook, someone may have 300 friends overall: That’s a lot of people to
keep track of. Through the Top Friends application—which you can find on Facebook
by searching for “Top Friends”—this same person can designate an “inner circle,” so to
speak, that is limited to a much smaller group. This use of the Top Friends social applica-
tion results in increased value to the specific members involved as it allows them to recon-
figure their respective social graphs in ways that better reflect their own social needs and
relationships within the larger (and less personal) context of Facebook as a whole.
How might “Top Friends” be adapted as a business-oriented social application?
Jive Software includes modules that indicate the top participants and most popular
content, for example, both of which can be used to focus participant attention on the
members (and content) getting the most play. As you plan your social application, give
plenty of forethought to exactly how it is that participants will manage the friends and
members that collect around that person with that application.
Why This Matters in Business
Whether you choose to create a social application of your own or join one that is
already in place, the extent to which connections are actively encouraged and can be
efficiently managed are important considerations. Look for tools, functions, and pro-
cesses—along with the ability to build on them or modify them in ways that make it
more likely that participants will create connections between themselves. Not only will
this result in increased use and “stickiness” of the community or larger social applica-
tion, it will also help participants create richer social graphs that facilitate content shar-
ing and the general spread of ideas between people.
As you look at the ways in which you can encourage connections, consider
adopting and trending specific metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that
reflect the degree to which connections and two-way relationships are being created.
These KPIs can help you evaluate the effects of connections-oriented tools that you
may use, create, or add later on. In addition, insisting on a focus on measurement right
from the start puts your social business program on a solid base.
Social Network Extensions
When building a social network, whether from scratch or through a ready-to-use
“software as a service” (SaaS) or proprietary platform, or instead building onto an
existing social networking platform like Orkut or MySpace, there will be a set selection
of prebuilt components and functions that you’ll use to define your core participant
interactions. Typical of these prebuilt functions are content ratings, member reputation,
content uploading, blogging or posting, and similar functions. While these will likely
cover the majority of what you’d like participants to be able to do within that applica-
tion—creating a profile, friending, uploading content, etc.—there will also be a set of