Visible Path - Data Mining Your Connections

Thanks to Martin Burns for pointing me to this company. Visible Path is one of the many companies trying to capitalize on corporate social networking. From their website:

“Visible Path transforms the way large companies leverage relationship capital to drive top-line revenue growth. The Visible Path platform applies the science of social network analysis to allow professionals to access the entire enterprise’s trusted relationship network without invading privacy or compromising relationships.”

There is one aspect of their technology that I find very unique and interesting. Instead of the typical friend/network request method of building your network, Visible Path plugs in to your email, instant messaging, contact management programs, and calendars to automatically data mine your relationships. To take it one step further, the software can then calculate the relative strength of a relationship based on the frequency of the communications.

What else is so unique about this? The actual breadth of their network, and information they have on people is much larger then thier actual registered user database. You don’t need to be a registered user for Visible Path to have some network information on you. For example, lets say Company ZZZ has installed Visible Path. Your business connection, Bob Miller from company ZZZ emails you about a possible deal. Visible Path now has established that Bob Miller and you are a connection, and visible path has your contact info. Then Joe Smith from company YYY (also has Visible Path installed) emails you. Visible path now has a network relationship of Bob Miller (ZZZ) <---> You <---> Joe Smith (YYY).

They could essentially automate the process of building your network even before you join the network.

The company is not young in terms of social networking years. Visibile Path has been around since early 2003. So why haven’t they made any significant waves in the vast ocean of online social networks? Their software is only available to medium - large companies who are willing to pay big bucks to implement it.

This is unfortunate because I could see this being very powerful if they opened it up into an online platform. Visible Path’s focus seems to have been primarily focused on the Sales crowd w/ implementation into CRM programs. But I think that the much larger, more general crowd of business professionals would be interested in this. Imagine if LinkedIN implemented something similar. A new member could join and have a good portion of their network already built with no effort.

Obviously a system like this would need to built with sufficient privacy options and have a way for any person to opt out of the network. But I think companies like Spoke and JigSaw have proved that people ARE willing to share this information.

[tags]Social Networking, Social Network, Visible Path, Corporate Social Networking, Social Media, Brian Balfour, LinkedIn[/tags]