Lotus Instant Messaging/ Web Conferencing ... - IBM Redbooks

from, though there are a handful of users on the graph from the US, France,Germany, and New Zealand.ResultsThe application caused a substantial amount of interest. On seeing the graphs,people were drawn to find out if they were on it and what did it mean if they were.The graphs proved to be of interest to look at purely from an aesthetic anglealone.Without applying any formal social network analysis, the graphs showed anumber of interesting properties:1. Unknown common acquaintances, that is, if person A knows B and C, but hadnot realized B and C also knew each other directly.2. Community hubs, that is, those who are part of several groups who act asbridges between the groups.3. Close positioning in the graph implies common links, thus identifying peoplewho are similarly connected.4. Highlights routes of influence between people, showing how someone mayindirectly influence a third party.The results cannot be conclusive, as the data set was not complete orrepresentative. Only a minute proportion of Sametime users used the system. Ifa larger number of users were to be used, more advanced and quantitativeassessment of the graphs would have to be taken in order to extract any usefulinformation.The system was only designed to be a proof of concept demonstrator. It showsthat social network graphs can (relatively easily) be built up from IM traffic. Tomake the system useful, so that it can identify communities and an individual’sposition within the network, more work is needed on the analysis of graphs. Workis also needed to understand the context that a link is formed in. The underlyingdata collection and rendering system, however, is sound.ConcernsInformal feedback regarding VS has raised several concerns, all of them,understandably, revolving around the privacy aspect.The system did include several restrictions in order to protect individual user’sprivacy. No data analysis was performed on the content of any IM session. Theonly thing recorded was the fact that an IM session had taken place betweenusers. Another privacy restriction was that the amount of IM traffic between twoAppendix A. Visualizing Sametime 453