"Is it the attractiveness of the product, or is it something about the community of people who are into those kinds of products?" Kleinberg wonders.

He says e-mail pattern analysis could help a company answer questions such as, "Who are the key people to influence?" and "For which products is it worth it, and for which is it not?"

"Social network analysis is one of the great tools for productivity going forward, and very few people understand it," says Thornton A. May, a Computerworld columnist and dean at the IT Leadership Academy at Florida Community College at Jacksonville. "People tend to think of social network analysis as a list of people -- an address book. But it should tell you not just who knows who, but who knows what as well."

Users should see social network analysis as more than a way to find dates or customers. It can "solve problems, create teams or recombine organizations," May says.

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