If Google is ever to effectively challenge Facebook and Twitter in social software, which is expected to be a key battleground in a world no longer dominated by atomized search experiences online, then hiring leading thinkers could be an important part of the company's strategy.

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Trained as a cognitive scientist at Stanford and UC San Diego, Evans joins a growing list of prominent hires by Google in recent months that will at the very least complicate the common saying that "Google doesn't get social software." Hopefully they can all work well together to move the social software world forward for all of us.

Photo of Evans used with permission from Tikva Morowati.

As Twitter became the star platform for Iranians to convey breaking news from on the ground, Facebook has been quiet by comparison. Now, by releasing an edition in the official language of Iran (also colloquially called Farsi), its attempting to capture some of the revolutionary self-expression that has thus far passed it by.

Whatever the language, Facebook pales in comparison to other social mediums currently in use for speedy transmission of events. To Iranians, Facebook is likely to be neither as familiar a publishing medium as blogs, nor relatively easy to access in the face of crackdowns (like Twitter is).

Persian Facebook might be viable for something with a longer-term vision, with groups and causes being better for cohesive political organizing than an amalgamation of hashtagged tweets. But for now, Facebook is decidedly ill-suited to helping Iranians to speak to the world.

Is Persian Necessary At All?

With one of the largest and most active blogospheres in the world, Iranians are not hurting for tools to express themselves politically and culturally online. They're just hurting for free access to them, which Facebook may not be able to provide considering it was blocked shortly before the election, and may even remain so.

As far as Twitter and other platforms go, the vast majority of those tweeting from within Iran are doing so in English. Adding a private, Persian-language social network to the mix isn't likely to aid those with the aim of communicating with the rest of the globe.

In addition to determining the value of an email contact, the researchers also found that those who had strong email ties with a manager enjoyed greater financial success than those who kept themselves more distant. In fact, those with strong links to a manager produced an average of $588 of revenue per month over the norm. (So maybe you should start emailing the boss more?)

Another value tied to greater financial success was network reach. A more diverse circle of correspondents - specifically, the number of people reachable in three steps - was also tied to higher performance. 

Some Negative Impacts

However, if there were too many managers involved, the old expression "too many cooks spoil the broth" proved to be true. Projects overly-managed tended to have less success.

As for those who typically emailed the same people over and over, the results were also found to be negative. This is perhaps due to repetitive and redundant information being exchanged, the researchers theorized.

The study also identified a particular type of email user dubbed a "gatekeeper." The gatekeeper was someone who insisted upon personally approving or enabling every request. The researchers determined that this person was a less valuable team member - monetarily that is. In other words, if you're constantly being asked to provide information or access to others, don't be flattered - you're just another node on a colleague's network and one that may very well be a bottleneck to the information flow.

What's better is to have a handful of "superstars" on a project who are well-connected and in the center of the information flow. This actually leads to better performance than if all team members were central to the communication pathways.

Finally, the researchers found that there were a handful of things that seemingly had no impact on performance. These included access to different divisions, access to different geographical locations, and gender distribution.

Conclusion

The results of this study can be extrapolated only so far since the researchers used consultants to determine the monetary value of connections and the success of projects. In other industries and companies, there may be different factors that determine a project's success or failure.

That said, there are still some over-arching truths to be found here - and these truths are relevant to the discussions we're having on the web today. For example, just recently, there was a lot of talk about how much value there was in your Twitter network. The question was raised after Jason Calacanis offered Twitter $250,000 for placement in the "Recommended Users" section of Twitter's site for a period of two years. His contention is that there's a definite value to the number of followers you have on the Twitter social network and he wanted Twitter to sell him those connections for a set price. But was he offering too little or too much? Without more research, it's hard to know.

As our social networks continue to figure more prominently in our interactions, both personal and professional, there's likely going to be more opportunities like this to study the value of those connections. What will a Facebook friend be worth, for example? What about a LinkedIn contact? Can any study ever really tell us for sure? All we do know now is that value doesn't come from the sheer number of connections alone, but in how you leverage those connections, how they're laid out in your network, and how they're interconnected, too.

For more information, you can refer to the slide deck (PPT) that summarizes this study's findings.