Mapping vs. Tracking

So, dear reader, there’s all these very cool maps and diagrams you can easily access, which will show you the intricacies of the social networks that you belong to. Friendster and Orkut, arguably the two heavyweights, have come under particular scrutiny.

This is a marvellous time vacuum and I like nothing better than to zoom in on maps of Manhattan and see where all the Orkut users live. Or know who Ben Discoe’s friends are on Friendster, and their relationships to each other.

However, I’m more interested in tracking how information is passed from person to person. (Maybe this is the same thing, but I’d reckon it isn’t – there are those to whom I’d send information, that I wouldn’t link to on Friendster or Orkut.) I’d like to see a diagram of this information sharing. For example: someone recently forwarded me the URL to the Isometric Screenshots project. I’d received this URL months before, and thought to myself, “wow, poor X is way behind.” But is he? Who gave it to him? Aren’t they behind too? Who started it? When did it start? What does the branching tree that would be the email trail look like?

There’s two things that interest me here.
1) Why forward? A lot of people forward me cool links (like the Isometric Screenshots). They took a split second to decide that I would be interested in this information and send it on. This sharing impulse, where you don’t really have anything to say except “wow, cool” is interesting because you wouldn’t bother to pick up the phone and call someone to tell them to go check it out. You’re saying to yourself “OK MK, but of course they would forward a link via email and not call you and tell you “OK, double you double you double you…”” But wait! It’s similar to how I’ve heard the texting impulse described – you wouldn’t call someone to say that there’s a sale on at H&M, but you would text that information to your friend. It’s information that you want people to know about, but not so much so that you would go through the whole “hi, how are you, ya I’m fine” stuff to get there.

2) Who starts it and how does it die? To borrow from the Tipping Point (sorry, I know you’ve all read it and are maybe tired of it, information fatigue, if you will) the people who start it might be “Mavens”, holders of the information, or “Connectors”, people who have mastered the weak tie and act as our social glue (meaning they have massive address books). I suppose those who start these forwarding frenzies might be Maven/Connector hybrids. I’d love to know the average life cycle of these kinds of phenomenon.

I’m sure someone out there has grand theories on all of this, charts and graphs maybe too. All I could find on Google was how to track email forwarding for spam and marketing and other nefarious purposes. If you know of any legitimate information, ie. people figuring this out for fun and not profit, please post it in the comments. I’ll keep digging.

And now, two of my favourite forwards that I have received multiple times over the years:
The Superfriends in “Whazzup”
I Kiss You!!!!

Enjoy them, for the fiftieth time. And no, I don’t remember who forwarded them to me first.