The BIL Social Graph Experiment

Nikhil Nilakantan

All through human history most information has been spread through formal and informal social networks. With enough interest on the topic, news spreads person to person, with the cycle continuing until most if not all of the social group is informed. The information may also spread to other social groups through connectors who may be members of more than one group.

With the rise of the internet and cellular technologies as social networking media, we now have access to a large number of synchronous and asynchronous tools by which to spread the word about anything that interests us.

The BIL Social Graph Experiment will collect and map how news of the BIL conference flowed through various formal and informal social networks leading up to the conference. For this experiment, we are requesting visitors to the BIL conference website, Wiki and Facebook group to fill out a short survey providing information on how they heard about the conference. By collecting and analyzing this data we plan to build the social graph of the BIL conference. The presentation will cover the results of the BIL Social Graph Experiment and a brief overview of social network theory.

Nikhil Nilakantan is President & CEO of Social Span Media LLC, a social media strategy and marketing consultancy. He is a technologist, marketer, social media expert and avid cyclist. His blog on social media marketing can be found at strategicast.com. At BIL, Nikhil plans to catch up with old friends, make new friends and test Kai’s mutant power to see if he can guess his MBTI type.