MARISA PLUMB
Level: Intermediate
ABSTRACT: This case study is a story of love and personal evolution. We have A WOMAN, who has always been magnetic in her cultural circle. We also have A MAN, who has never had much clout or attracted much attention. After falling in love, they experience significant shifts in their combined and individual social reach over time, illustrating the complex behaviors and emotions that define influential people. This story, and others like it, warrant further exploration, and could help us understand why simple network analyses and shapshots fail to capture the realities and evolving nature of human motivation.
7pm on a Thursday evening in October
The space was small and crowded, as people gathered
"We'll get started soon," she said, loudly, though was already listening. She had the kind of smoker's voice that caused to happen around her. It was a voice that stirred your hope, and evoked your inclination for premature confession. No one judged the meaning of her words.
She and had a once-in-a-lifetime romance every few years. None of them were destined to last. Ex-lovers dropped out of her social circles, some going so far as to restart their lives, castigating themselves for falling so hard.
That night, she had just such a new lover by her side. Awkward and unreliable as her latest partner was, she introduced his talents and pledged his insider value to everyone they met. Even though he suspected the exaggeration, he her, and listened to what she said, hoping it was just the truth he could not see.
But it was clear to all that he was intimidated and nervous: Even if he was equal to her in thought and dedication, when it came time for action, she was liberated to speak her insights aloud was not.
But her popularity had nothing to do with how much she loved him, and needed him. During their quiet nights together, they had come up with an undeniably brilliant idea, for their time.
He figured she would make something magic of it, in the way that she did. But instead, she asked if they could perform their insight together and speak to the world from a shared stage. It made him so happy that he nearly choked on his heart.
They presented their idea in ways that made it wildly successful. all over again, wishing they could imitate the way that she was. And they even gave him some of the credit, more than he'd ever had before.
Circles beyond circles enclosed them, seeking the couple's attention. Things moved quickly and they received gold member status and offers for services they never thought to want.
On a pale Sunday evening after their biggest show yet, she asked if he thought the idea had changed since they began. He told her not to worry.
He said something about and the memory of intention: They didn't need to concern themselves with those
However, this was a lie. He said this because he knew their idea was getting stale and old and he would soon be left behind.
He could have provided the next big idea but he was as aware that this was his best self, as last.
She sensed this and began to avoid him.
He was and retreated to the shag rug under the ceiling fan, listening to the anonymous, busy street.
He might be alone a while, he thought, so he made great efforts to stay in the view of someone; anyone would do.
He new areas of expertise.
Not oddly, when he met new people, they seemed to look past him—he imagined they were looking for someone else, someone like her. But he decided to work extraordinarily hard to get his new peers to make eye contact in long meetings.
Soon, he discovered an unclaimed area where and convinced them that he understood the answers to big questions. He wrote articles and books on the utility of the latest explanations and trends, even the ambiguous ones. Although he feared the public speaking engagements would reveal his lack of real expertise, he thought of her. A little angry and still a little awed, he found the resolve to carry on.
Meanwhile, she followed his new success, from a distance, over various social channels. Her attention eventually took on an obsessive quality, prompting her to call him, her outlook desperate, her voice now thin.
to reveal the secrets of success.
Marisa Plumb uses narrative, software, and performance to investigate concepts in information science and explore how we experience technology. She received her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, lives in Brooklyn, and can be found here.
Part 4: Identifying Influence in Social Networks
Challenges and Pitfalls of Complex Relationships
Level: Intermediate
Variations: 2
ABSTRACT: This case study is a story of love and personal evolution. We have A WOMAN, who has always been magnetic in her cultural circle. We also have A MAN, who has never had much clout or attracted much attention. After falling in love, they experience significant shifts in their combined and individual social reach over time, illustrating the complex behaviors and emotions that define influential people. This story, and others like it, warrant further exploration, and could help us understand why simple network analyses and shapshots fail to capture the realities and evolving nature of human motivation.
7pm on a Thursday evening in October
The space was small and crowded, as people gathered
"We'll get started soon," she said, loudly, though was already listening. She had the kind of smoker's voice that caused to happen around her. It was a voice that stirred your hope, and evoked your inclination for premature confession. No one judged the meaning of her words.
She and had a once-in-a-lifetime romance every few years. None of them were destined to last. Ex-lovers dropped out of her social circles, some going so far as to restart their lives, castigating themselves for falling so hard.
That night, she had just such a new lover by her side. Awkward and unreliable as her latest partner was, she introduced his talents and pledged his insider value to everyone they met. Even though he suspected the exaggeration, he her, and listened to what she said, hoping it was just the truth he could not see.
But it was clear to all that he was intimidated and nervous: Even if he was equal to her in thought and dedication, when it came time for action, she was liberated to speak her insights aloud was not.
But her popularity had nothing to do with how much she loved him, and needed him. During their quiet nights together, they had come up with an undeniably brilliant idea, for their time.
He figured she would make something magic of it, in the way that she did. But instead, she asked if they could perform their insight together and speak to the world from a shared stage. It made him so happy that he nearly choked on his heart.
They presented their idea in ways that made it wildly successful. all over again, wishing they could imitate the way that she was. And they even gave him some of the credit, more than he'd ever had before.
Circles beyond circles enclosed them, seeking the couple's attention. Things moved quickly and they received gold member status and offers for services they never thought to want.
On a pale Sunday evening after their biggest show yet, she asked if he thought the idea had changed since they began. He told her not to worry.
He said something about and the memory of intention: They didn't need to concern themselves with those
However, this was a lie. He said this because he knew their idea was getting stale and old and he would soon be left behind.
He could have provided the next big idea but he was as aware that this was his best self, as last.
She sensed this and began to avoid him.
He was and retreated to the shag rug under the ceiling fan, listening to the anonymous, busy street.
He might be alone a while, he thought, so he made great efforts to stay in the view of someone; anyone would do.
He new areas of expertise.
Not oddly, when he met new people, they seemed to look past him—he imagined they were looking for someone else, someone like her. But he decided to work extraordinarily hard to get his new peers to make eye contact in long meetings.
Soon, he discovered an unclaimed area where and convinced them that he understood the answers to big questions. He wrote articles and books on the utility of the latest explanations and trends, even the ambiguous ones. Although he feared the public speaking engagements would reveal his lack of real expertise, he thought of her. A little angry and still a little awed, he found the resolve to carry on.
Meanwhile, she followed his new success, from a distance, over various social channels. Her attention eventually took on an obsessive quality, prompting her to call him, her outlook desperate, her voice now thin.
to reveal the secrets of success.
ABSTRACT: This synopsis of our recent research highlights the challenges of identifying genuine influence in social networks.
Introduction
Today, we'd like to introduce our outlook on how to exploit networks.
Many consider the social network—the relationships and interactions within —to be the primary medium for the spread of information, ideas, and influence. For decades, social scientists have been interested in analyzing and understanding in social systems, just as natural scientists have sought to understand influence in the physical world.
The basic idea of influence is that one in another entity.
Flip over the first and the will fall.
Knowing where these dominos are placed, and which can is extremely powerful knowledge.
Even though we know the analogue with the physical world is in the domino business. In other words, we are tremendously interested in the between members of a social network and in how influence propagates in the network.
Here's of using influence for marketing: when a person observes their social contacts performing an action such as buying a certain kind of product, they may decide to perform the same action themselves.
In truth, when a person performs an action, she may have for doing so: she may have heard of it outside of her social network and may have decided its value then; the product is very popular; or she may be her social contacts perform that action.
If there is genuine influence, it can be leveraged for a number of applications, such as viral marketing. But marketing, like planning, is typically conducted as a prospective exercise—we think of who or what might help our brand and try to exploit the relevant forces in our favor—but it is usually only in retrospect that works.
In social networks, influence can be more complicated because internal states are often unobservable, intentional behavior can be strategic, and can change the effect one actor has on another.
And even more challenging, actors can choose different which can confound efforts to infer influence from correlated behaviors between actors. As a consequence, there has been tremendous interest in developing methods for better understanding the effect that networked interactions have on the spread of social behaviors and
Introduction
Today, we'd like to introduce our outlook on how to exploit networks.
Many consider the social network—the relationships and interactions within —to be the primary medium for the spread of information, ideas, and influence. For decades, social scientists have been interested in analyzing and understanding in social systems, just as natural scientists have sought to understand influence in the physical world.
The basic idea of influence is that one in another entity.
Flip over the first and the will fall.
Knowing where these dominos are placed, and which can is extremely powerful knowledge.
Even though we know the analogue with the physical world is in the domino business. In other words, we are tremendously interested in the between members of a social network and in how influence propagates in the network.
Here's of using influence for marketing: when a person observes their social contacts performing an action such as buying a certain kind of product, they may decide to perform the same action themselves.
In truth, when a person performs an action, she may have for doing so: she may have heard of it outside of her social network and may have decided its value then; the product is very popular; or she may be her social contacts perform that action.
If there is genuine influence, it can be leveraged for a number of applications, such as viral marketing. But marketing, like planning, is typically conducted as a prospective exercise—we think of who or what might help our brand and try to exploit the relevant forces in our favor—but it is usually only in retrospect that works.
In social networks, influence can be more complicated because internal states are often unobservable, intentional behavior can be strategic, and can change the effect one actor has on another.
And even more challenging, actors can choose different which can confound efforts to infer influence from correlated behaviors between actors. As a consequence, there has been tremendous interest in developing methods for better understanding the effect that networked interactions have on the spread of social behaviors and
Marisa Plumb uses narrative, software, and performance to investigate concepts in information science and explore how we experience technology. She received her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, lives in Brooklyn, and can be found here.