Web2.0 has transformed the way information is created, managed and shared. Collaboration and information sharing capabilities have gained tremendous significance in today’s times for organisations in all fields and of all sizes. Social networking sites, blogs and wikis are generating a huge amount of information about people’s behaviour, likes and dislikes, which can be leveraged by organisations for their businesses.

Kathy Harris, VP and distinguished Gartner analyst, presented a research paper on Social Mining and Social Intelligence early this year, to help organisations discover and exploit the knowledge, behaviours and tendencies of Web societies. In these societies, participants generate and share rich content, and wield considerable power and influence. In an interview with Biztech2.0, Harris sheds light on the emerging concepts of social mining and social intelligence.

What is social mining and intelligence?

The behaviours of people on the Web are some what different from their behaviours in physical society. There is a lot of information, which can be gleaned by analysing these behaviours. Social Mining and Social Intelligence are terms developed from the concept of Data Mining and Business Intelligence. However, these processes are much more complex than BI and data mining because you are not just looking at mining data or finding trends and patterns but actually analysing the behaviours of people.

We are really trying to find out how human networks form, where the power resides in some of these networks, how information flows though them, how a crowd is built around an idea, where the most influential people stand in the network, how they live and join. All these things provide clues about the likes and dislikes of people.

Can this be considered as part of Enterprise 2.0?

Yes, I think it is a natural extension because we expect communities and human networks to use social technology to form and function. Again the way information is being created is similar to what I explained above, thus, it can be called as social information.

More information will be available to enterprises on the behaviour patterns of their employees from this trend.

What benefits does social mining offer to an enterprise?

If an organisation can understand how these networks are formed and who are some of the influential people in these networks, then these people can be targeted for marketing purpose. If one can discover the needs and wants of these influential people and provide compelling products, then they are capable of influencing people around them to buy the same products.

There are some people on these networks, who are great in driving ideas. They can be offered compelling ideas to initiate discussion, gather opinions of people from the community. This can actually help to create an idea, which can be used for innovation within the organisation. Besides the ability to discover more about how people think, one can gauge how they react to particular products and services, which can create a very rich environment that is yet to be exploited.

How can organisations gather social intelligence?

Unfortunately, there is a lack of technologies yet to help us do that. I think today much of the analytical work is done by people through their observation. Over time, as we gather more data, understand how to structure it and mine it and as newer technologies become available to us, we would be able to take more advantage.

There is lot of mining and intelligence, which looks at people’s actions, the number of times that action is undertaken, the number of people who are undertaking that action etc. This is primarily a traditional data analysis, which helps to discover trends. However, there are deeper patterns, which take into consideration human dimensions. We just don’t have the processes and technologies to do unveil those patterns at present; however, they are set to arrive soon and will bring great advantages in the years to come.