– Reply magnets – some people have a gift (or a technique) for posting in a way that gets responses. These folks are utterly essential in the functioning of technical newsgroups, as they’re the folks that newbies end up getting support from In network terms, they’ve got high out-degree and low in-degree. – Answer people – these people almost never post new threads, but answer the queries of a large number of unconnected people.
They did a great deal of network mapping, graphing the posts and responses, and seeing the structures that emerge. Rather than analyzing the content of these newsgroups (hard to do, as they’re huge), Smith and his team looked at structures. As it turns out, these groups are still hugely important for people looking for technical support (even in the days of pervasive spam) and Microsoft is interested in cultivating the utility of these networks. Much of Marc’s recent work has looked at behavioral patterns in technical support newsgroups in Usenet. Smith, a pioneering researcher on social networks who’s done important work on analyzing relationships in Usenet groups in his time at Microsoft Research. Even at Microsoft conferences, Excel extensions don’t usually get this type of attention. This emphasis on social network studies helps explain why I’m currently sitting in a packed conference room, learning about an extension to Excel. I’m not a computer scientist, not university teaching faculty, and I’m not doing any research sponsored by Microsoft… all of which turns out to be okay, as it’s a pretty interesting gathering looking at current research topics in computer science, with a strong emphasis on the study of social networks… something that interest me, even if I’m not doing a ton of active work on the topic. In the spirit of attending OPCs – “other people’s conferences”, conferences where you’re invited, but not part of the demographic/professional group the conference is aimed at – I’m now at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit.
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