Christoph Bussler
Social Network Analysis (SNA)
A really good definition is surprisingly hard to find! Here my attempt:
Social Network Analysis is the application of a set of algorithms that determine interesting nodes of a social network based on defined selection criteria.
In principle, the algorithms can be of any type and do not have to be necessarily graph algorithms (for example, show me the office floor location (aka cubicles:-)) of the people in my network who are in the same office location that I am in currently). And the meaning of "interesting nodes" is in the eye of the beholder. While certain nodes like "top performer" or "top connectors" are often very interesting, there is no standard set of criteria in general.
Wikipedia's introduction of Social Network Analysis is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis.
A nice introductory video about Social Network Analysis is shown here: Social Networking in Plain English.
Aside from the Social Network Analysis algorithms themselves an interesting question is that of an appropriate software architecture that
For a Social Network Analysis architecture, see here: Social Network Analysis Architecture.
There is a huge amount of Web resources available in the context of Social Network Analysis. A growing list is maintained here: Social Network Analysis Web Resources.
The categories are currently:
© Christoph Bussler, 1991 -