VU Amsterdam: Social Web Course: Lecture1: Introduction to Social Web

Social Web��2015

Lecture 1: Introduction to Social Web?

Lora AroyoThe Network Institute

VU University Amsterdam

Course Organization

Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Old_book_-_Timeless_Books.jpg

Goals of the course

Understand & Try how the Social Web works

ü  What IS the Social Web & Social Computing?

ü  What people DO on the Social Web?

ü  How is DATA on the Social Web ACCESSED?

ü  How is Social Web DATA used for STUDIES?

ü  What are typical Social Web APPLICATIONS?

ü  What are Social Web research CHALLENGES?

Social Web 2015, Lora Aroyo

You will learn aboutü  data formats

ü  social web platforms

ü  data mining, analysis, visualization & reuse across applications

ü  user-generated content

ü  personalization in Social Web apps

ü  interdisciplinary research

ü  critical thinking


Format of the course ü  Lots of WORK, and lots of FUN

ü  Lots of interaction

•  post a question or a discussion point by Sunday 17:00

•  vote on questions by Monday 10:00

•  discuss on selected topics during lectures on Monday

•  group work during hands-on sessions

•  presentations of final assignments

ü  Use name or VUNetID to identify yourself in website postings


How does it work

ü  before the Lectures: do the required reading & assignments

ü  Assignments & Hands-on: done in groups

ü  state who did what in the “Acknowledgements” section

ü  use document template: ACM SIG proceedings style; PDF only

ü  name of the file: [group#]_[handson#]; [group#]_[assignment#]

ü  title page of your docs: include names of all group members & group#


Scheduleü  Interactive Lectures: Mondays 1:30-3:15

assignments & hands-on introduced during lecture

ü  Hands-on Sessions: Thursdays 11:00-12:45

practical exercises & work on assignments

ü  Final Presentations: in week 12


Gradingü  Assignment 1 (15%)

ü  Assignment 2 (15%)

ü  Assignment 3 (15%)

ü  Final Assignment: application & presentation (15%)

ü  Final Assignment: individual report (30%)

ü Questions/Discussion (10%)



Why Social Web?

“digital technologyis changing both how words and ideas are created and proliferate, and how they are

studied.”


social media is a rich resource that provides “a fuller picture of today’s cultural norms,

dialogue, trends and events to inform scholarship, the legislative process, new works of authorship, education and other purposes.”


How much content is consumed & created

every second?


http://blog.wiwo.de/look-at-it/2013/01/16/infografik-von-2002-bis-2012-das-internet-eine-dekade-spater/

http://proto-knowledge.blogspot.nl/2011_03_01_archive.html

The Rise of Users & Content


http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/files/2012/05/spending-time-online.gif

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/files/2012/05/spending-time-online.gif

What do those numbers mean?

Image source: http://clareactman22.blogspot.com/2010/06/meaning-of-life.html


Our goal is to ...understand the practices, implications, culture, & meaning of the sites, as well as users' engagement

with them

include this understanding as part of software engineering for the new social world


How did it all start?


1969 - WWW

http://www.creativeramblings.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/style1-1000px-rec7-MILLION.jpg


1994 – Last.fm



2003 - Twitter



2007 – Google+




The Big Ones


2001: Wikipedia

2000: Nupedia - articles written by experts licensed as free contentfounded by Jimmy Wales with Larry Sanger (editor-in-chief)

2001: Wikipedia - a side-project of Nupedia, to allow collaboration on articles prior to entering the peer-review process

Articles: 19,700 (2002), 3,835,000 (2012), 4,157,698 (2013)Wiki pages: 29,355,491 (2013)


Community-based Systems

ü Participation vs. lurkingü Social capitalü Social networkingü Trust & reputationü Privacy & presence

Peter Brusilovsky, Social Web Course, University of Pittsburgh


2004: Facebookdistinct college networks only (Harvard-only SNS)


2005: Facebookincluding other universities, high school students, professionals inside corporate networks, and eventually - everyone

ability for outside developers to build "Applications"


2007: Facebook APIPlatform that consists of a Facebook variant of HTML = Facebook Markup Language (FBML)a Facebook variant of SQL = FQL (Facebook Query Language)

not based on open standardssites support: Bebo & Meebo


2010: Facebook ��Open Graph


2012: Facebook Goes Public

"We cannot assure you that we will effectively manage our growth."

"... it hopes to raise $5 billion in its IPO. That would be the most for an Internet IPO since Google Inc. and its early backers raised $1.9 billion in 2004."

“ ... eight years after its computer-hacking CEO Mark Zuckerberg started the service at Harvard University."


2013: Facebook Graph Search



http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/10/24/facebook-graph-search

Jack Dorsey launches Twitter in July 2006 and by 2012 it has:

•  500 million users

•  340 million tweets daily

•  1.6 billion search queries daily

•  is in the10th most visited websites

•  becomes the "the SMS of the Internet"

http://blog.alivenow.in/2011/10/infographic-140-characters-journey.html/http://blog.alivenow.in/2011/10/infographic-140-characters-journey.html/


Library of Congress archive of public Twitter messages reached 170 billion tweets and rising, by about 500 million tweets a day

9000 tweets/sec during MTV Video Music Awards (Beyonce pregnant);

7200 tweets/sec before the end of WC for women’s football (Japan

beats US)

In 2011

In 2012

8000 tweets/sec during Madonna’s performance

In 2014



•  launched June 28, 2011: since then 500 million users (2012), 235 million active (monthly)

•  "social layer”: not just a single site, but an overarching "layer”

•  Data Liberation policy


G+ (Re-)Sharing


G+ What’s Hot & Trending


G+ Hagouts


G+ Events


G+ Pages

G+ Local

2013

2013


end 2013


•  interdisciplinary study

•  social structure where technology puts power in communities (not institutions)

•  internet provides a good platform for emerging social structures

•  manifestos of social computing, e.g. social networks, blogs, podcasting, tagging, meet-ups, mash-ups, social search, user-generated-content, wikis, P2P content distribution, RSS, open source software, etc.*

* Forrester Research (2008), http:// wwwforrester.com/ResearchThemes/SocialComputing

Social Computing


“Tenets of Social Computing”*

•  innovation will shift from top-down to bottom-up

•  value will shift from ownership to experience

•  power will shift from institutions to communities

* Charlene Li (2006), http://www.socialcustomer.com/2006/02/the_forrester_s.html


New Means of Communication•  beyond email, text messaging & mobile

phone

•  asynchronous (not requiring real-time response)

•  a lot of communication seems irrelevant & trivial

•  some can be helpful & interesting

•  celebrities & organizations use it to communicate with their fan bases & audience

•  many people (especially the teenagers) addicted to this new mode of communication


New Means of Communication•  beyond email, text messaging & mobile

phone

•  asynchronous (not requiring real-time response)

•  a lot of communication seems irrelevant & trivial

•  some can be helpful & interesting

•  celebrities & organizations use it to communicate with their fan bases & audience

•  many people (especially the teenagers) addicted to this new mode of communication


New Form of Communities•  Social Web sites are in essence online communities

•  Groups around a number of natural attributes of the members, e.g. schools attended, employers, cities of residence.

•  Groups around any type of interest, hobby, or cause, where people can help one another with information, advice, and personal networks

e.g. the role of communities in the Arab Spring, unrests in Turkey, Ukraine, Russia Olympics, Occupy Wall Street, etc.


New Source of Knowledge

•  beyond what search engines can dig into

•  people can dig into their network of connections to find answers to questions

•  folklore knowledge

•  friends-based news updates

•  friends-based serendipity

•  ‘‘worldwide directories’’ of people and concepts


New Source of Entertainment

•  Most people need to entertain themselves to enjoy life, to recharge themselves, and to pass the time

•  That’s why people have accounts on several social Web sites, and visit them rather diligently and regularly

•  People got catapulted to worldwide fame after they appeared on YouTube


New Venue for Self-expression

•  a surprisingly large number of people have had a strong desire for self-expression and desire for self-satisfaction that comes from helping others

•  a major reason for the Wikipedia success, where more than 10 mil articles have been contributed by thousands of volunteers without financial incentives

•  the personal posting many people do appears to help them to derive a sense of ‘self-assurance and belonging’


New Venue for Self-expression

•  a surprisingly large number of people have had a strong desire for self-expression and desire for self-satisfaction that comes from helping others

•  a major reason for the Wikipedia success, where more than 10 mil articles have been contributed by thousands of volunteers without financial incentives

•  the personal posting many people do appears to help them to derive a sense of ‘self-assurance and belonging’


Social web sites ��=��

social networking sites + ��

social media sites


Social Sites Categoriesü  Social networking sites (open vs. closed)

•  General-purpose, e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn

•  Vertical, e.g. Dogster, Couchsurfing

ü  Social media sites (open vs. closed)

•  Media types, e.g. Flickr (photos), Last.FM (music), YouTube (video)

* Won Kim, Ok-Ran Jeong, Sang-Won Lee (2010). On social Web sites. Information Systems 35, 215–236


Diversity in Cultures•  MySpace: US & abroad•  Friendster: Pacific Islands•  Orkut: Brazil, India•  Mixi: Japan•  LunarStorm: Sweden•  Hyves: NL •  Grono: Poland

•  Hi5: South America, Europe•  Bebo: UK, New Zealand, Australia•  QQ: China•  Cyworld: Korea•  Skyrock: France•  Windows Live Spaces: Mexico,

Italy, and Spain


2011: FB vs. Orkut in Brazil

http://mashable.com/2012/01/17/facebook-beats-orkut-brazil/



Diversity in Activities•  aSmallWorld & BeautifulPeople: restricted access - appear

selective & elite•  Couchsurfing: activity-centered•  BlackPlanet: identity-driven•  MyChurch: affiliation-focused•  Usenet & public discussion forums: structured by topics

•  SNS are structured as personal networks•  "egocentric”: individual at the center of their own community•  mirror unmediated social structures


SNS: Features•  Personal profiles

•  Establishing online connections

•  Participating in online groups

•  Communicating with online connections

•  Sharing user generated content

•  Expressing opinions

•  Finding information

•  Retaining users


Expressing Opinions•  Allowing members to leave comments on the content,

voting by ranking (3 out of 5 stars), or marking as ‘‘favorite,’’ flagging as spam/inappropriate

•  Sites use different ways to present and organize those comments (hierarchical, timestamping, counting, etc.)

Why there is no ‘DISLIKE’ button in FB? Should there be?

For example, Digg has two buttons, ‘digg it’ &‘bury’



Reflections ...•  Twitter profile vs. Facebook profile?

•  Find friends on different networks?

•  How does LinkedIn facilitate the forming & joining of groups? FB? Google+? Others?

•  Pros & cons of (a)symmetry of friendship?

•  Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Flickr vs. Vine differences in terms facilitating communication?

•  How often do you experience problems of duplication of content shared across different sites?

•  FB vs Google+ actions for retaining users?


understand the practices, implications, culture & meaning of the sites, as well as users' engagement with them

learn how to use this knowledge in designing successful social web applications

Where do YOU come in


Peter Brusilovsky, Social Web Course, University of Pittsburgh

The New Web: ��The Web of People


Hands-on Teaser

•  first (basic) taste of social web data analysis: http://bit.ly/SocWeb_Ex1

•  some Python & command line experience•  Twitter data•  check out Getting Started Guide on course website

http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/socialweb2014 •  check out the exercises in the book:

Mining the Social Web (Second Edition), by Matthew A. Russell


Education

VU Amsterdam: Social Web Course: Lecture1: Introduction to Social Web