Social Graphs 101

Loads of people will be talking about Social Graphs in the not too distant future. Especially marketers. And especially marketers at high technology firms.

Got a Linkedin profile, but can’t be bothered ’starting again’ or ‘replicating’ your personal network on Facebook, or Myspace or Hi5 - or visa versa? Worried about inaccuracy about data about you on Flickr that you haven’t updated recently, or that beta site that you can’t remember the name of? Or how about the theft / poor reuse of identity data concerning you? Want more control and the ability to manage your ‘relationship’ data? Offcourse you do.

Jeremiah Owyang recently penned a really good synopsis of what a Social Graph actually is - and what it means to you or your business.

To be honest I anticipate a real shift in the way that marketers have to re-design, or extend their community based marketing platforms or strategies to reflect this innovation. It is simply too logical, and I can’t see anything stopping this transition.

And when this innovation reaches a tipping point, won’t it be great logging into a website or web-service that leverages a central sign-on or Open-Social .api - and as a result ‘automatically’ promoting content with my permission that the ’service’ knows is relevant to me…..like train timetables or advertisements or where to pick up my prescription medicine or a hire car.