While we all understand and to some extent harness the power of the network, especially in our social lives, it dawned on me that there is an inherent conflict with one of the key value drivers of how social networks can be leveraged in the enterprise.

The network effect, as defined by Dion Hinchcliffe, Enterprise 2.0 luminary, “occurs when a good or service has more value the more that others have it too”.  Think of email ,wikis, blogs and search in the context of enterprise 2.0 tools.  This makes perfect sense to me in all these instances, except when you extend the concept to information discovery and finding the knowledge expert by exposing the social graph in the enterprise.

The social graph is predicated on the fact that as the number of connections between people and their social circles expands, the network increases in power. However, when in search of the carbon emissions expert in my organization, I use the network to identify a single expert.  The rest is noise, in fact only a means to an end.  If I followed the premise of the network effect, the best answer would come from an aggregation of all the extraneous and peripheral bits of information I picked up along the way, culminating into one giant ball of confusion. One could argue, that if it weren't for the expansive network, I would have never found the expert.  Read my blog on the 3 Rs of Enterprise 2.0 and I'll explain why I don't completely agree with this.

Furthermore, the theory encourages bandwagon jumping, and lemming behavior, as unknowledgeable, unaccredited outsiders participate in the network.  Thus, poor decision making and poor results ensue.  The resulting effect?  Negative, but not unsolvable.