What's your network worth?

I feel that I have all the existing possible coverage on Facebook. How great it, how poor it is, why Microsoft invested in it and how Google is 'ganging up' against it. The most interesting stories so far have been from New York Times and the Economist. However, most articles I have read miss some of the most important rules to use to evaluate the worth of 'social networks' (as a side, not sure I understand the term - are there 'non-social' networks out there?).

I've isolated below 3 concepts that I believe social networks could evaluate when looking at the information they store. I'm focusing on 'social network' rules not values for platform that help developers test the popularity of their applications.

Any data is no data
Social networks are supposedly great at gathering a lot of data about people and they can do that while making these people good about it! By recreating a friendly and gregrarious environment, individuals enjoy providing information about themselves that they would very unlikely give to anybody else otherwise. Because of this, we often assume that this information is valuable and has worth for advertisers. Great. Great? Really?

Well, first there is the fact that unique identity is difficult to capture...so you might to be the first to list yourself up before others 'steal your virtual identity' - check how many 'david beckhams' there are on Facebook and you'll see what I mean.

Second, and more importantly, the fact that some go crazy about information in 'social network', is a sign that the marketing profession needs to get better at identifying what 'good data' really is. Do we care that someone is in a taxi driving back home, or drinking tea watching 'desperate housewives'? Sure, it's cool but should that level of information deserve to be treated at the same level as 'where I studied or where I work'?

So rule #1: 'any data is no data'. Unless you have a way to weigh the importance of the different types of data you are gathering, you gather a bunch of useless information about people. I can only assume that 'social networks' haver that figured out.

Not all your friends are equal
The same goes about your 'friends'. Should each person in your network be treated the same? Now, this might not be information you would want to share broadly but surely not everyone in your network is valued the same. Here, I don't mean that you like one person more than another. I mean you look at certain people for one thing versus others. For instance, who in your network would you value the most for opinions on wine, travel tips….If you want to know more about how this maps to the way our brain works, check out 'The Tipping Point' (p188) where Malcolm Gladwell talks about 'transactive memory'.

So rule #2: not all your friends are equal.

Context is everything
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is some value in gathering a lot of data about people's life, but the quality of it comes from "more information about your information" (tell what's relevant for what in your network). Contextual relevancy is a great way for advertisers to intelligently understand information and how it truly impacts decisions. If you think about information as a great to predict what people will do next, then temporal information (e.g what you are doing right now) and permanent information (when you were born for instance) can only be useful when balanced against each other in the context of a particular purpose.

So rule #3: context is everything.