Interest graph

The Interest graph vs. the Social Graph.

The Interest Graph refers to the specific and varied interests that form one’s personal identity, and the attempt to connect people based on those interests. On an individual scale, this means the different things one person is interested in—be it jogging, celebrity gossip, or animal rights—that make up their likes and dislikes, and what has more meaning to them over someone else. On a broader scale, it’s the way those interests form unspoken relationships with others who share them, and expand to create a network of like-minded people.

Interest Graph vs Social Graph

Contrary to the Social Graph, which subsists of the network of people you know personally, the Interest Graph consists of the network of people who share interest with you, but who you don’t necessarily know personally. While the Social Graph, which was popularized by Facebook, has been touted by Mark Zuckerberg as making it so that “groups and applications can achieve enormous growth”, others are starting to question its limitations in connecting people in a meaningful way.

Though the Social Graph consists of who you know, the Interest Graph consists of what you like, what moves you, and the facets of your personality that, in part, make up who you are. These connections can be much stronger, and much more telling, that simply who you’re friends—or friends of friends of friends—with. Two people being linked together because they knew each other in elementary school or work at the same job doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about those people beyond their connection to each other. And for the people involved, it doesn’t always foster a very strong or lasting connection—Joe might be Facebook friends with Jill, but that doesn’t mean the like any of the same music, television, sports, and so on. Beyond who knows who and how, the Social Graph offers very little insight into each person’s personal tastes, preferences and behaviours.

On the other hand, the Interest Graph offers powerful insight into who someone is as a person, and allows people to instantly connect with other who share exactly the same interests as them, regardless of knowing them or not. The ability to graph peoples’ interests allows us to tap into potential relationships that we might never have been exposed to. Before, you could be in a room with 5 other people who love the same football team as you do, but never find that out because you don’t know them and have no way of knowing what their interests are. But mapping and connecting people's interests means we can immediately identify those connections, in and of themselves. With the Interest Graph being explored, and many companies beginning to take advantage of it, people can now immediately connect with like-minded people who share the same interests as them.

Use

The term was first widely used in reference to Twitter, which allows people to follow others based on their interests. Following someone is "an affirmation of your interest in their insights and recommendations”. Over time, more and more companies have begun to leverage the Interest Graph to appeal to users, connect them with each other, and gain insight into what makes them tick.

Businesses can utilize the concept of interest graph in a number of ways:

• Consumers can receive special offers and discounts based on their interests, what became a base for crowdsourced services like Groupon,
• Instead of aiming at a large group of viewers, advertisements can be much more targeted,
• E-mail campaigns that reach members of a particular interest node can be created,
• Interest graphs have an impact on product development since potential new features of a product lay in neighboring nodes of a particular interest graph.

In advertisement

For advertisers alone, the Interest Graph offers a potential to target consumers that hasn’t been seen before. In a February 2011 article on TechCrunch, Rip Empson said “I think we can be sure that whoever can collect a record of your current interests and package them for advertisers stands to make a lot of money...[Max] Levchin says that Twitter may end up being a more advantageous platform to advertisers because it allows you to follow a brand and get realtime information and updates — through brand discovery and celebrity discovery — which is more likely to be informative than what you get from your friends, who may not be experts.”. In another sense, e-commerce sites such as Netflix and Amazon have successfully tapped into the interest graph with highly customized recommendations, which have been paramount to their success.

Product development

The massive potential for not just advertising, but offering users a targeted, personalized experience based on what truly interests them—and taking that a step further to create a social experience by connecting those people to each other—has inspired several companies to leverage the Interest Graph for their businesses and platforms.

• Social music site turntable.fm connects people with the same taste in music through shared playlists,
• Q & A site Quora notes the Interest Graph as one of its “two key pillars” saying that “By understanding my interests and allowing me to shape my experience through that additional filter, Quora’s architecture creates an environment where I can accumulate relevant knowledge very quickly”.
• Other companies such as Socialize, Inc. have approached the Interest Graph from a mobile standpoint, arguing that “since a person’s phone is such an intimate device, they typically have it with them all the time. And furthermore, we’re making a bet that apps on the smartphone approximate a person’s interests”.

Undiscovered potential

Because it’s a relatively new concept, or at least the idea of people and interests as “nodes of the graph” is, the Interest Graph has yet to take a spot in our public lexicon the way the Social Graph has. This intimate knowledge of a person’s likes and interests offers valuable data that is otherwise hard to come by, and would at the very least take extensive research. That said, the potential of the information withheld in the Interest Graph means it's only a matter of time before it's being widely used in technology, marketing, and many other industries.