I was at Juliette Powell’s book signing last week at The Apartment (I think that is what it was called) down on Crosby Street, in Lower Manhattan, which took place right after Jeff Pulver‘s  SocComm conference.

I managed to pry a copy of  33 Million People in the Room, Juliette‘s new book, from her mother, of all people (with Juliette’s permission) and have been slowly reading it (and enjoying the book) – I’m not done yet.

However, there’s some really good ideas in her book and I wanted to start exploring them – so I envison a part 2 and part 3 along with this part 1 on my review of 33 Million People in the Room by Juliette Powell.

In some ways, 33 Million People is basic (ie: Chapter 2 – Getting Started – I didn’t need to read  though someone starting out with Social Networking,might want to read it).

And then,  some of the   ideas she’s presenting are both simple and  complex, and worth taking a much closer look at, such as “being in the center of a social network provides he or she, who is so positioned, much more information, and that information is power (page 11, 3rd paragraph).

Juliette takes this argument further by proposing  companies  hiring “highly networked employees have a better chance at being at the center of it’s industry’s network is even more impressive” (page 12, 2nd paragraph).

I was smiling at that statement – Juliette  justified my value to organizations I am part of, as I  seek to connect and remain within “the center” of  social networks and communities.

That’s a realization I did not expect to find when I picked up the book last week  – Social Networking brings more information, and information, rightly harnessed, is power.  Juliette is going to post some of the case studies she cites in the book on her website , including the UCLA / Boardex study that she cites on page 10 of 33 Million People in the Room.

In fact, while searching for a good diagram to show the power of being at the center of a Social Network I ran into an article published in Science News a few weeks ago that says our position in Social Networks is partly based on genetics – Genetics Of Popularity: Genetic Influence In Social Networks Identified – according the article:

“…Researchers from Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego have found that our place in a social network is influenced in part by our genes, according to new findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“….The researchers found that popularity, or the number of times an individual was named as a friend, and the likelihood that those friends know one another, were both strongly heritable. Additionally, location within the network, or the tendency to be at the center or on the edges of the group, was also genetically linked. However, the researchers were surprised to learn that the number of people named as a friend by an individual did not appear to be inherited.”

Could it be that some people are born to be “at the center of a room, the room“?   I don’t know, but this idea, while simple, is deep, and worth studying a lot more.

Sort of reminds me, back over a year ago, I painted a Social Network

“Spirit of Color Elementals” 48″ x 56″ Oil Pastel on Paper

My approach is more intuitive – I see the social network as radiating out from the center, in my case, it was “building blocks” -  it’s much more profound than that – and I’m often thinking about artists like  Picasso and the interrelationships with other artists he had in Paris at the turn of the century, or Cezanne, and his interrelationships  (if such maps exist, I suspect the patterns and placement would show something unusual) – such a map is hard to find, maybe it doesn’t exist yet – and the closest thing I could come up with is actually from a familiar source, the Virtual World Community and the concept of Social Circles.

Where you want to be is at the center of the network – and I bet, as we study  influentials, throughout history, we’d see the evidence of  “the group” and that people who are influential are acting, weather they realize it, or not, as part of a group – and the evolution of an individual with in the group is tied, somehow, to the rest in that group.

In fact, recently, there was a story on Barack Obama in the New York Times, just after he won the Presidential Election – Obama’s Friends Form Strategy to Stay Close

“… In the presidential campaign, the Obamas had a “no new friends” rule, surrounding themselves with a coterie of familiar faces. Even if the Obamas lift that rule in Washington, newcomers are unlikely to replicate the intensity of this group’s ties, formed over more than a decade by births and deaths, Scrabble games, barbecues and vacations, but also by shared beliefs about race, success and responsibility.

Back when the Obamas were hardly the most prominent members of the group, the doctors, lawyers and businessmen from Chicago became not just one another’s friends but also one another’s supporters, forming a network that eventually helped the politician among them on his way to a Senate seat and then the presidency.”

Could it be said the achievement of any one person is somewhat related to the group they’re part of – the structure of it, the intensity of relationships with it?  Funny thing, Barack Obama wasn’t in the center of that circle of friends, not initially – but he used the network in a way to support his political career, gaining strength and sustenance from it.

Getting back to 33 Million People in the Room (and there’s a story about why it’s 33 million, and not some other number)…

Juliette Powell is able to tie “being in the center” to “Microcelebrity” (see page 47, first paragraph)

“… This key benefit of microcelebrity ties back to being at the center of the universe for your industry-being at the center of the information flow inevitably gives you a competitive advantage.”

Microcelebrity has an impact on business, and Juliette ties Jimmy Whales  influence in the development of WikiPedia to his microcelebrity – which has it’s own pluses and minus and responsibilities  (see page 48); Jimmy Whales says  influence and his opinion are confined within areas he’s considered an expert in, such as knowledge products, but he stays away from publicly stating his opinion in areas away from areas he doesn’t have expertise in (such as international politics).

A New Metric

One of the things Juliette Powell stumbled upon is a Social Media Metric for influence – she implied something few have actually yet looked into or tried to do (see page 50 of her book)

“…. when you RSVP to an event on Facebook and immediately find other friends RSVPing to the same one…”

What’s that, if not an example of filtering out influentials in a Social Network?   Facebook does collect a lot of information, and while much of it is not presented, some of it is made available in Lexicon.   More in depth data is reserved for large advertisers – but I suspect, information such as how many in a circle, in a group, in a location, for a query or subject, is tied back to profiles and the information exists to chart influentials in a social network in a far more useful way than, I think, has been done, so far.

There’s really a lot more in the book, and in a few days, I’ll write the next post on 33 Million People in the Room by Juliette Powell as there’s a lot more to cover, and I’m not done yet reading her book.

By the way, if your in New York on February 26th, 2009, check out Social Media for Entrepreneurs and Start-ups where Juliette Powell will be speaking about her book – for more information, check out GarysGuide.org.