Getting Started with Gephi-First Graph

Couple of days ago, I downloaded this tool and wanted to do some R&D with it.I started to get graph data using netvizz – facebook to gephi. 
and generated a .GDF file for BI group on facebook. I got 72 nodes and 1652 edges. In this case, the nodes are people and the edges show that one person is following another. Here are some of the screen-shots of how I generated Gephi graph. I really found this tutorial posted on blackboard by Dr. Ram to be helpful. Kindly refer more for these graphs on that tutorial.

2/22/2012...Introduction to graph Theory

In the lecture given by Dr. Sudha Ram on Graph theory, she started with Königsberg Graph's theory and the bridges that graph theory was all about edges, nodes and connecting them together. She discussed about Informational networks which help move information move from one place to another and how today they were looked in the context of social media. One major area of discussion was constructing a Collaboration Network where you try to find the shortest path between 2 nodes to build a transportation network with the help of hubs.

She told about degree which is number of links that are connected to a node. In-degree in which incoming edges are counted for a node and in out-degree outgoing edges are counted for a note.

Some questions which were answered were: what we are going to do to grow the nodes? How am I going to connect nodes in network using directed or undirected nodes?

We learned about the Giant graph component on web where significant portion or nodes o websites are connected to each other and there are very few nodes which are not connected to each other. Two huge graphs could be compared based on average degree, one with more average degree is well connected with another.

Another concept was Small World Phenomenon in which a study of WWW and social media shows that if we take any pair of nodes, there is a surprisingly less distance between two arbitrary nodes.

Below is a graph which I generated using Gephi from facebook data. In this case, the nodes are people and the edges show that one person is following another. Generated .gdf file using netvizz – facebook to gephi

Journey so Far till precampaign report - GOMC

So Far So Good!!
We gave presentation for our campaign strategy to Dr. Ram telling her about our client i.e. University Press (University of Arizona) and how we designed campaigns to progress towards our goal and increase profits for our clients. She gave us a nice feedback on how to improve our pre campaign report for Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC). There were around 7 teams which gave the presentation and had talks about their respective clients. The main thing which I personally liked about this campaign is its three week period which is most challenging task in order to increase the profits of client using ad-words on Google, while some of its benefits are that we get a certificate from Google if we have a client which is Non Profit Organization (NPO) and $250 assigned to every team to advertise for their client.

We had 3 campaigns which were:
1. Tucson Festival of Books
2. Mexican American Chicano Movement
3. Foods of Sonoran Desert

We have goal to sell around 20 books online during this three week period on which our client is providing 20% discount after downloading coupons from University Press Website (http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/). We decided to sell 20 books which are on average $20-25 per copy or at-least one $250 book. Well, to conclude I am more interested in knowing more about concepts from Dr Sudha Ram in this course MIS 587 and give my best shot with the team to win this case competition and visit Google's Headquarters with team and Dr. Ram.

Appendix:
Client Website: http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/
GOMC project: http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/

Strategies for Pre Campaign GOMC

In the lecture by Dr. Ram today on Long Tail Keywords, I hope we can get a lot more still on this project. The keyword matching options for our ads to pop up in front was a very tactical strategy. Well coming on to Long Tail Keywords(MandelBrot--Father of Long Tail), Long tail keywords are a type of keyword phrase that has at least three, and some times as many as five words in the phrase. Long tail keywords are used when the website wants to refine search terms to the web page, as well as when the searcher is looking for something rather specific. Like normal keywords, long tail keywords are used to define what is on the web page and what the publisher wants to be found under in search engines and on search engine results pages. These keywords are highly specific, and draw less traffic for the website, but tend to draw more quality traffic, which leads in more conversions than normal keywords. Long tail keywords can also be used by publishers and visitors in different ways.

5 Myths about Long Tail Keywords:

1) Long tail keywords won’t bring you much traffic.

2) Long Tail Keywords aren’t worth the trouble.

3) Long tail keywords are for established websites.

4) 1 Long tail keyword per piece of content.

5)Only focus on long tail keywords.

 

Benefiting from the Long Tail: 

1. There is less competition so you can rank on the first page of Google for long tail keywords far easier than ranking for short tail keywords

2. If you target lots of long tail keywords you can get lots of easy traffic

3. The visitors searching for long tail keywords know exactly what they want, be it ‘Small Business Web Design’ or ‘Half Price Armani Suits’, they know exactly what they want and hopefully you can provide it to them.