Pre-requisites: None

“Some 73 % of online adults now use a social networking site of some kind... [and] 42 % of online adults now use multiple social networking sites, ” according to a recent Pew Research survey [1]. If a business needs to be where its customers are, then it clearly needs to establish a strong presence on social media, but how does one develop an online reputation or develop their brand online? How does one maintain a strong user community on social networking sites? How can one craft a potent social advertising strategy? What are the potential pitfalls? To answer these, we must synthesize knowledge from a variety of disciplines. While so-ciologists have researched such concepts as homophily and social capital, which point to the underlying motivations in the relationships of individuals in a network, computer scientists have uncovered surprising patterns in real-world social networks, and marketing experts have studied viral marketing and social advertising. This course will combine such foundational material with actual case studies of businesses in the social world. The course is split into five main parts: (1) Network Patterns, which describes and seeks to explain several common patterns found in real-world social networks