Social networks have swept the internet scene from other budding concepts and taken center stage in such an overwhelming way, that one is hard pressed nowadays, to find someone who isn’t involved in one network or another. Whether its on Facebook, Twitter, or another venue, people are constantly busy searching out friends, getting, and providing updates, sending messages, and playing games. If you think this whole social scene is  mostly for young people looking to mingle, and that you, as a ’serious’ person, have no time to spend on this fad, you should think again. Chances are, that if you work for a medium, to large size organization, you are probably already spending time on a social network within your organization’s enterprise portal, without even knowing it. 

If you follow colleagues’ birthdays, tag friends in company photos, or even keep your own blog on the enterprise portal, you are most likely a closet intranet addict. Rest assured though, you are not alone. The rise of organizational portals has seen the increased presence of social networking on these portals. The development of enterprise social media tools is on a steady rise. Microsoft’s Sharepoint, and SAP’s NetWeaver, are two good examples of enterprise tools that are constantly getting their social networking features tweaked and enhanced.

Is it all about social opportunities?

The ongoing growth of the enterprise portal market, constantly requires development of new tools, and feature sets for smart data management. With this market in mind, Technion Institute researchers, Prof. Oded Shmueli, and Royi Ronen, have developed a novel concept: a Generic social protocol, that can upgrade data management within a portal’s social networks.

Social Protocols are automation tools for social networks that govern the network’s structure, and the way data is communicated within, and without it.. Social protocols enable all of the connectivity features that make a network social. For example, say you are invited to a party by someone using the Facebook Events feature. When you receive the invitation you are asked whether or not you will be attending, and given the option to answer tentatively, with a ‘maybe’. Since your response is visible to the rest of the invitees, it may affect their responses, and possibly facilitate with the organization of the party. In fact, the social protocol behind ‘Facebook Events’ directly impacts the party’s organization by providing the three options for response.

The Generic Social Protocol

The idea behind the Generic Social Protocol is to create a malleable protocol that can be adapted to the needs of each organizational social network, by allowing users that initiate an event to set the protocol logic rules themselves. In This way, by applying protocol modifiers, an event initiator can have greater control over the behavior of their invitees. Assume for the moment that you wish to recruit several developers using the “one member brings another” method.  An event is initiated by sending an initiation message to any desired set of network members. By applying protocol modifiers, you can define that only developers will enjoy the privilege of forwarding the message to their social network friends outside the company, whereas others can only view the message. In this manner you gain more control over information sharing between your social network participants. A tool such as this is bound to improve an organization’s productivity, streamline it’s work process, and become a meaningful supplement for social networks on enterprise portals. The Generic Social Protocol widens the number of potential participants who are not necessarily directly connected to the event’s initiator and can greatly change decision making, regarding events in any social network.

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The above article is extracted from The Wadi.

The Patent

Social networks interaction protocol
Ref. COM-1197

BACKGROUND

Recently, social networks turn into an automated platform which enables participants to become dynamic users rather than just provide site contents. Social networks applications structure participants intelligent communication by sending automate invitation to friends in the same network and collect different types of given responses. Since these responses can be viewed by all invited friends, they create great impact during decision making regarding the event on large number of participants.However, a better solution of structured communication is a modified interaction protocol that offers a wide range of communication and dissemination options

METHOD

Our methodology provides a platform for structured communication between participants which includes several types of modifiable messages . In every instance of the modified protocol, the participants determine their status regarding a certain event, which can be any happening, physical or virtual. As the protocol instance runs, participants make some of their friends in the network aware of event. Participants who are aware of the event may determine their status regarding this event as ‘positive’, ‘negative’ or ‘undecided’, and their friends can see these decisions. Based on such status decisions, other participants may determine their own status regarding the event. In addition, Since the protocol fits participant’s specific needs it enables decisions changing by activating additional protocols during each run of the protocol instance. 

ADVANTAGES

• Enables protocol modifying according to user’s definition of protocol
• Enables better decision making regarding events in social network

APPLICATIONS

• Enterprise portal social networks 
• Web 2.0 social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Linked in