or using SNA for Competitive Intelligence
Robert Morgan never thought that a few lines on his LinkedIn profile would have got him into serious trouble. In 2009, the Microsoft R&D employee revealed that his R&D projects included: "128-bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan". The problem? His profile was updated at the same time of Microsoft’s launching of Windows 7, and prior to releasing information regarding its next versions! That is, Robert incautiously revealed one of Microsoft’s kept secrets. Soon after, numerous bloggers found further relevant data on other employees’ profiles.
The rapid rise of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs encourages users to share any information, uncensored and in real-time. This creates an unprecedented opportunity for seekers of corporate information, particularly with regards to competitors. Employees who just wish to update their friends about their doings unintentionally damage and put their employers at risk. In a survey that involved 220 firms conducted by Proofpoint in 2009, 18% of the companies reported illegitimate exposure of confidential information through blogs, 18% - through video and audio sharing websites (e.g. Youtube), 17% - through social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, and 13% - through Twitter and SMS.
Today, Web2.0 allows performing a thorough corporate analysis of any firm. Using LinkedIn, for example, one can follow its employees, their current and former positions, sort them according to their rank - from CEO and down, and to draw a detailed picture of the firm’s customers and suppliers. Experts believe that 80% of the desired information is held by the employees, and SNs are where this information is unearthed. As a consequence, consulting firms that use Competitive Intelligence (CI) increasingly employ analysis of SNs like LinkedIn for their purposes. An important factor that play a key role is the high frequency of updates by the users of the SNs.
Furthermore, a growing number of software companies are developing tools for extracting valuable information by processing enormous amounts of data coming from SNs. For instance, ClearForest, an Israeli sart-up, which was sold to Thomson Reuters news agency, developed a software that can extract relevant information from any block of text. Its customer range from Brand Monitoring companies to pension and hedge funds, who use such tools for sell/buy decisions. One such customer, a journalist, uses SNA graphing to expose family relations between key actors who frequently win government contracts and key corporate decision makers.
References:
(1) Barnea, A. 2009. ‘Heaven for Corporate Spies’, Status, http://www.ifeel.co.il/page/14126
(2) Barquin, R. 2006. ‘Social Network Analysis and Business Intelligence’, BeyeNetwork, http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/3088
(3) ClearForest. 2010, http://www.clearforest.com/
(4) Darom, N. 2010. ‘Spies on the Web: What Type of Business Information Can Be Extracted From Social Networks’, TheMarker, http://it.themarker.com/tmit/article/10312
(5) Fco Fernando de la Rosa Troyano, María Teresa Gómez López and Rafael Martínez Gasca. 2010. ‘COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE BASED ON SOCIAL NETWORKS FOR DECISION MAKING’. International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications, Vol. 4, No. 4
(6) Neve, Z. 2010. ‘Business Intelligence: Social Networks – The New Surveillance Arena’, Globes
(7) Trotter, P. 2009. ‘Windows 8 Release Expected in 2012’, PCWorld, http://www.pcworld.com/article/182855/windows_8_release_expected_in_2012.html
1 comment:
This is a very good post, showing how you don't need a lot of words to raise and deal with thought-provoking concepts. In this week where Wikileaks is on the front page, competitive intelligence is on everyone's mind, and while there's a lot more you could have said, you've laid the groundwork for the arguments nicely.
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