Network Mapping

Network mapping is a relatively new tool that allows a person to find Internet, Facebook and Twitter networks based on electronic links. One of the early versions of this capability was Maltego out of South Africa which not only maps the links but also shows hub people as larger bubbles on the map. The tool is useful for finding experts and influencers (linked to many) in any given industry or subject.

 Network mapping is a cleaner way of thinking about how the world really works, both from a marketing standpoint and from a research standpoint. A mechanical viewpoint might see customers as stand-alone dots on a map and thus marketing becomes a Willie Loman project of working down the street calling on the dots. A biological viewpoint sees the world as web like with strong 80/20 rules. Finding the center of those webs not only gives leverage to marketing efforts (one influencer can reach hundreds or thousands of followers) but also make research go faster.

 If we view the information landscape as being clumpy with nodes connected by thin lines, then looking for information can be thought of as being dropped on an unknown landscape and proceeding to stumble into the connecting lines until we find small nodes and then finally work our way to the large nodes. Having a map of these nodes and connecting links speeds up the search process. Network mapping software is growing exponentially as data mining tools have increased in sophistication and dropped in price. We expect this to be an area of growth and great change over the next decade.