Northwestern U Course in Social Network Analysis

I'm on the faculty at Northwestern where I teach Word of Mouth Marketing.  I just noticed this fascinating new course.  More evidence that word of mouth is moving from art to science.

Topics in Communication Studies: Social Network Analysis

Description: This course explores the use of social network analysis to understand the growing connectivity and complexity in the world around us on different scales - ranging from small groups to the World Wide Web. It examines how we create social, economic and technological networks and how these networks enable and constrain our attitudes and behavior.

The course will discuss how social networks concepts, theories, and visual-analytic methods are being used to design  and understand a wide range of phenomena such as social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace), recommender systems (e.g., Amazon, NetFlix, Pandora), trust and reputation systems (e.g., eBay, Epinions, Slashdot), search engines (e.g., Google, Technorati), P2P file-sharing (e.g., BitTorrent; Joost), user-generated content (e.g., Flickr, Wikipedia, Yelp), social bookmarking (e.g., del.icio.us, digg, reddit) and virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life, World of Warcraft).

Instructor: Professor Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University

Site: http://nosh.northwestern.edu/

(Thanks for the tip, Megan!)