By now everyone is aware of the massive boom in social-networking (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) and obviously a big part of its business model revolves around being able to mine this data to create information that can be used to make money for someone.

Gartner has identified 'Social Analytics' as one of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2011.

• Has anyone looked at their existing data structures to determine if they could extract a social graph and then perform further data mining against this?
• How does it fit in with your other strategic development strategies?
• What information are you trying to extract from the data?

Take for example, a bank. They could conceivably determine a social graph through account relationships and transactions. Obviously there would be open edges on the graph where funds enter/leave the institute, but that shouldn't detract from the usefulness of the data.

I'm looking for actual examples with the answers, as well as why/how they did it. References to other sites will be greatly appreciated.

Note: I'm not at all referring to mining data out of actual social networks.