Public vs. private: comparing public social network information with email

ABSTRACT

The goal of this research is to facilitate the design of systems which will mine and use sociocentric social networks without infringing privacy. We describe an extensive experiment we conducted within our organization comparing social network information gathered from various intranet public sources with social network information gathered from a private source - the organizational email system. We also report the conclusions of a series of interviews we conducted based on our experiment. The results shed light on the richness of public social network information, its characteristics, and added value over email network information.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Computer-supported cooperative work

General Terms:
Experimentation, Human Factors, Measurement

Keywords:
data mining, egocentric, private, public, sna, social network analysis, social networks, sociocentric