
Is social network analysis a good product idea for a startup? - andrew_eit
I&#x27;ve just moved to Berlin with the intention of starting a startup, hopefully in the field of Social Network Analysis (this is what I wrote my Computer Science thesis on, and I loved it).<p>However, I do not seem to be able to come up with any half-decent ideas. Everything seems to be out there already.<p>How do you guys come up with ideas? Do you recognise the feeling of eagerly wanting to work on something but yet not being able to truly love anything enough to put effort into it?<p>So, my question. How did you guys come up with your ideas that you are working on now? Was it sudden or did you have this idea growing in your mind for a while?<p>Best,
Andrew
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mindcrime
Well, I wouldn't say that "social network analysis is a good product idea",
no. But I would say "social network analysis is an amazingly useful
technology, and some novel application of it could be a great product". The
hard part, as you've probably noticed, is figuring out how to apply the
technology to solving an interesting problem, or enabling something cool and
new that people will pay for (or focus enough eyeballs on, so you can make
money on advertising).

I think one thing to do is just keep the tech itself in a sort of mental
queue, and as you walk around, see stuff, read, encounter people, etc., just
constantly ask yourself "how could SNA be useful to somebody in this
situation?" And probably, eventually, you'll have an "aha" moment and realize
"Shit, I could build this cool thing to do X!"

I would say, watch a lot, listen a lot, read a lot and think a lot. Ask
questions, be curious and don't be afraid to daydream ridiculous ideas that
you wind up discarding. But do carry around a notepad, or a smartphone/tablet
with a notetaking app, or _something_ so you can record your ideas when they
come to you. Not much would be worse than having that great idea and then
forgetting it before you write it down. Also, sometimes, a "not so great" idea
that you go back and revisit, may turn into the seed for a better idea. So go
back and re-read your old notes occasionally.

FWIW, we're working on using SNA as part of one of our products. Our idea
(which is not completely novel anyway) is to apply SNA to enterprise search
and use the network links to help rank results. There's more to our product
than just that, but it is one element (to be fair, one we haven't really
started implementing yet).

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andrew_eit
Hey Mindcrime, thanks for your insight. That's exactly what I think about the
situation too. An SNA product on its own serves no purpose unless it is
applied to some sort of specific (pre-defined) problem. Similar to data
analytics I guess, one needs to know why and what they are analysing before
building the solution.

Yeah I use the notebook idea! Very useful.

Out of curiousity, how are you finding working with SNA? I expect that your
market/customers are primarily large companies with lots fo data.

~~~
mindcrime
_Out of curiousity, how are you finding working with SNA? I expect that your
market /customers are primarily large companies with lots fo data._

Exactly, yeah. We've had that on the back-burner for a while actually. I got
as far as doing some prototyping a while back, but we haven't truly
implemented SNA the way we plan yet. Hopefully very soon I'll be able to start
putting more time into that.

FWIW, my interest in using SNA in the organizational setting was heavily
inspired by reading _The Hidden Power of Social Networks_.
[http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Power-Social-Networks-
Understan...](http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Power-Social-Networks-
Understanding/dp/1591392705) If you haven't seen that yet, it might be worth a
look.

~~~
andrew_eit
Thanks mindcrime, I'll have a look at that book!

