Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services

"All He Does All Day Is Write ... "

2010-03-27T13:58:00.000-05:00

[http://comics.com/off_the_mark/2010-03-22/]

"Okay, This Is Just Too Weird": Identifying Outreach Opportunities In Facebook

2009-07-08T16:03:00.009-05:00

Bietila, David / Edwards, Elizabeth / Issue Date: 4-Aug-2008

Citation: Bietila, D. & Edwards, E. (2008, August). “Okay, this is just too weird”: Identifying outreach opportunities in Facebook. Presented at A Reference Renaissance: Current and Future Trends, Denver, CO.

[http://www.bcr.org/referencerenaissance/]

Abstract: The tremendous popularity of social networking sites like Facebook presents libraries with unique opportunities for reaching students. What many organizations fail to realize, however, is that the presence of professors, librarians, or parents in this social space is often perceived as intrusive, unwelcome, or just plain "weird". Researchers at a small university library decided to take a step back and ask a critical question: what do our students really want? That is, how do our students really use Facebook, and what part can the library play in this social environment?

The library literature provides some insights; many of these recommendations, however, are from the perspective of librarians and do not reflect students' expectations, experiences, or preferences. Researchers conducted a mixed methods study of students' use of Facebook, focusing on the intersection of students' academic and social lives in this platform. Results indicated that students are uncertain about the library and librarians using Facebook, but are willing to consider accessing the library through this platform in the right circumstances.

By listening to students' concerns and identifying standards for interaction, the researchers made recommendations for restructuring the library's Facebook initiatives. This panel will offer an overview of this study and its implications for library outreach efforts in Facebook. This panel will explore the conflict between the literature's best practices and students' expectations for library behavior in Facebook.

A discussion of the library's experiences in implementing and refining its Facebook campaign will facilitate a broader consideration of the opportunities social networking sites present for libraries.

PPT And Notes Available From

[http://hdl.handle.net/1961/4533]

Slideshare Available At

[http://www.slideshare.net/brixton/okay-this-is-just-too-weird-identifying-outreach-opportunities-in-facebook]

Related

[http://www.slideshare.net/brixton/ok-this-is-just-too-weird-identifying-outreach-opportunites-in-facebook]

The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

2009-07-07T19:52:00.014-05:00

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal / Ben Mezrich

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages / On Sale: July 14, 2009 /Price: $25.00 / ISBN: 978-0-385-52937-2 (0-385-52937-6)

Also available As: Unabridged audio CD, Unabridged audiobook download and An eBook. /Tags: Provided LibraryThing

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook.Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends–outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.Eduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance–and sexual success–was getting invited to join one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard.

Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a computer genius of the first order.Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus–and subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school.

In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.What followed–a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers–makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money.

The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart.The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively readable story of innocence lost–and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another.

Ben Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, has published ten books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine. [snip]

Source

[http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385529372]

Amazon

[http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Billionaires-Founding-Facebook-Betrayal/dp/0385529376]

See Also

Facebook: The Movie / Forbes/com / Taylor Buley / 07.07.09, 08:20 PM EDT

Forbes has obtained Aaron Sorkin's screenplay about the founding of the social network.

BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has become a major player on the glowing screen. Next stop? The big screen.

Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin are said to have contracted with Aaron Sorkin--writer of movies such as A Few Good Men and Charlie Wilson's War and for the television series West Wing and Sports Night--to write a script about the genesis of Facebook. Sorkin's script, dated May 28 and obtained by Forbes, is titled The Social Network.

It's the story of Zuckerberg, "a sweet-looking 19-year-old whose lack of any physically intimidating attributes masks a very complicated and dangerous anger." The storyline, which starts with Zuckerberg's girlfriend dumping him in a bar and ends with him adding her as a friend on his multibillion-dollar Web site, is said to be based on Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook. A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. Mezrich's book is scheduled to go on sale later this month.

The 162-page script includes juicy dialogue between Zuckerberg and ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Divya Narendrera. In 2004, ConnectU filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging breach of contract and unauthorized use of ConnectU's source code.

[more]

[http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/07/facebook-zuckerberg-sorkin-technology-internet-facebook.html]

News Coverage

CHE /Wired Campus / Author Explores the Juicy Origins of Facebook / Jeff Young

[http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Author-Explores-the-Juicy/7583/]

BookTV / After Words / Interview

From BookExpo America in New York City ... .

Ben Mezrich recounts the creation of the social networking site, Facebook, in The Accidental Billionaires. Mr. Mezrich details the ascendancy of the website from its beginnings as a members-only service for Harvard University students to its current international status and profiles several of the principal players in the development of the site, including Facebook's current CEO Mark Zuckerberg..

Ben Mezrich discusses his book with A.J. Jacobs, editor at large at Esquire magazine ... .

Airings

August 8th at 10pm (ET)
August 9th at 9pm (ET)
August 10th at 12am (ET)
August 10th at 3am (ET)

[http://tinyurl.com/kmk3by]

And

"I'm Ready For My Close Up ...": Facebook - The Movie

[http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/08/august-28-2008-computerworld-new.html]

SMW'09: Social Mobile Web / August 29 - 31 2009 / Vancouver, Canada

2009-04-29T13:08:00.001-05:00

The mobile space is evolving at an astonishing rate. At present there are over 3.5 billion mobile subscribers worldwide and with continued advances in devices, services and billing models, the mobile web looks set to inspire a new age of anytime, anywhere information access. The inherent characteristics of mobile phones enable new types of interactions, e.g. mobile phones are personal to the individual, they are always on and always connected. And as such we are seeing a shift towards mobile devices for social mediated tasks.

The world is also witnessing an explosion in social web services. Online social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace continue to experience huge increases in usage, with more and more users seeking novel ways of interacting with their friends and family.

In this workshop we are interested in the combination of these two exciting research spaces: the social web and the mobile space. We believe that the social mobile web is going to be a highly influential research area in the near future. As such this workshop will investigate the current state of the social mobile web.

Topics of interest to this workshop include (but are not limited to) the following:

Novel social interactions on mobile devices
Social mobile content sharing and distribution services
Context aware mobile services - beyond location based services
Social mobile search and social mobile browsing
User evaluations of social mobile services
Mobile user interfaces that incorporate social elements
Mobility and social networks
Models of mobile social behavior and mobile traces
Urban gaming, mobile mixed reality, etc.
Innovative social mobile applications

This workshop is targeted towards researchers working within the mobile web and social web spaces.

The deadline for papers is May 11th 2009 / Full details on paper submission are available.

Source

[http://thesocialmobileweb.org/]

Freedom To Surf: The Productive Benefits Of Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing

2009-04-07T12:01:00.029-05:00

Freedom to Surf:

Workers More Productive

If Allowed to Use the Internet for Leisure

Media Release, Thursday 2 April 2009
University of Melbourne

Surfing the net at work for pleasure actually increases our concentration levels and helps make a more productive workforce, according to a new University of Melbourne study.

Dr Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in ‘Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing’ (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t.

“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says.

[snip]

According to the study of 300 workers, 70% of people who use the Internet at work engage in WILB. Among the most popular WILB activities are searching for information about products, reading online news sites. [snip]

The attraction of WILB, according to Dr Coker, can be attributed to people’s imperfect concentration. “People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration. [snip]

" .... . Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days work, and as a result, increased productivity.”

However Dr Coker says that it is important such browsing is done in moderation, as internet addiction can have the reverse effect.

[snip]

“WILB is not as helpful for ... those who behave with internet addiction tendencies will have a lower productivity than those without.”

Multimedia Available

Broadcast Quality Video (approx 500mb+)

Dr Brent Coker Discussing Study

[http://media.marcom.unimelb.edu.au/pub/newsroom/Coker/cokerb_mr_20090401.mov]
Note: an FTP client is recommended to download this footage.

>>>You Tube Video "Dr Brent Coker - 'Freedom To Surf'"<<<

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga-8__7tgkE]

An audio (MP3) file of this interview is available at

[http://media.marcom.unimelb.edu.au/pub/newsroom/Coker/cokerb_mr_20090401.mp3]
Contact

Dr Brent Coker /University of Melbourne / Dept of Management and Marketing

bcoker@unimelb.edu.au

Source

[http://voice.unimelb.edu.au/news/5750/]

Link To Significant Portion of The Study Report

Freedom to Surf: The Productive Benefits of Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB)

[http://www.deloosh.com/Blog/post.aspx?id=3246c7d5-bfdc-4328-afae-f4ece02780dc]

NYTimes: Facebook | Two Hundred Million And Counting ...

2009-03-29T19:04:00.009-05:00

New York Times / March 29, 2009

Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast? / By BRAD STONE

WHEN Facebook signed up its 100 millionth member last August, its employees spread out in two parks in Palo Alto, Calif., for a huge barbecue. Sometime this week, this five-year-old start-up, born in a dorm room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user.

That staggering growth rate — doubling in size in just eight months — suggests Facebook is rapidly becoming the Web’s dominant social ecosystem and an essential personal and business networking tool in much of the wired world.

[snip]

By any measure, Facebook’s growth is a great accomplishment. The crew of Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s 24-year-old co-founder and chief executive, is signing up nearly a million new members a day, and now more than 70 percent of the service’s members live overseas, in countries like Italy, the Czech Republic and Indonesia. Facebook’s ranks in those countries swelled last year after the company offered its site in their languages.

[snip]

Unlike search engines, which ably track prominent Internet presences, Facebook reconnects regular folks with old friends and strengthens their bonds with new pals — even if the glue is nothing more than embarrassing old pictures or memories of their second-grade teacher.

[snip]

Facebook’s mission, he says, is to be used by everyone in the world to share information seamlessly. “Two hundred million in a world of six billion is tiny,” he says. “It’s a cool milestone. It’s great that we reached that, especially in such a short amount of time. But there is so much more to do.”

[snip]

Uniting disparate groups on a single Internet service runs counter to 50 years of research by sociologists into what is known as “homophily” — the tendency of individuals to associate only with like-minded people of similar age and ethnicity.

[snip]

Facebook is trying to teach members to use privacy settings to manage their network so they can speak discreetly only to certain friends, like co-workers or family members, as opposed to other “friends” like bosses or professional colleagues. But most Facebook users haven’t taken advantage of the privacy settings; the company estimates that only 20 percent of its members use them.

[snip]

Internet evangelists say that when a technology diffuses into society, as Facebook appears to be doing, it has achieved “critical mass.” The sheer presence of all their friends, family and colleagues on Facebook creates potent ties between users and the site — ties that are hard to break even when people want to break them.

Source

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/technology/internet/29face.html]

NPR: What's For Sale? Check Facebook

2009-03-27T17:09:00.005-05:00

NPR / Weekend Edition Saturday / March 7, 2009

The social-networking juggernaut Facebook is out to change online classified ads, turning what are often flat and anonymous listings into something personal, interactive and social.

In the process, the Facebook marketplace could raise millions of dollars for charity.

Facebook first launched an online classified ad site nearly two years ago, but it didn't catch on. Today, when most people think of online classifieds, they think of craigslist or perhaps the local newspaper's Web site.

Craigslist alone brings in tens of millions of dollars, and analysts say it could bring in much more. Facebook views that market as a potentially new and sizeable revenue stream. It's especially attractive because Facebook, though wildly popular, doesn't turn a profit.

The company's new approach to classified ads is like Facebook itself — social and interactive. A company called Oodle designed the site and will manage it.

The software application allows you to easily sell something, give it away, ask for something or sell an item with the proceeds going to a nonprofit.

[more]

Source

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101569720]

Rome 2009 Seminar: Workshop Web 2.0 And Libraries

2009-03-22T15:29:00.004-05:00

Workshop Web 2.0 And Libraries

6 marzo 2009, h.9.00-13.30

Università degli Studi Roma Tre (Facoltà di Architettura)

Aula Urbano VIII,

Via della Madonna dei Monti, 40 Roma

Web 2.0 has posed a number of challenges for the library and marks a transition within the library world in the way that services are delivered to users. In the course of this seminar, organised by CASPUR/CIBER in collaboration with AIB Lazio, AIDA, CILEA, FAO and University of Rome Three Library System we will seek to describe how libraries have responded to the opportunities offered by Web 2.0 applications and how organisations can best exploit the potential which Library 2.0 can provide.

Keynote speaker, Gerry McKiernan, will describe current trends and changing scenarios, while other speakers will describe how Library 2.0 features have been deployed with a special focus on the Italian context.

9.00 - 9.30 Greetings and Introduction/ Mary Joan Crowley, Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" [abstract] /[ppt]/[video]

9.30 - 11.00 / The Future of The Library / Gerry McKiernan, Iowa State University Library [abstract] / [ppt] 16M / [video]

11.00 - 11.30 / Coffee break

11.30 - 12.00 / Q&A

12.00 - 12.30 / "Italian Library 2.0?": One Question, Many answers / Bonaria Biancu, Università di Milano Bicocca [abstract]/[ppt] [survey results -In Italian] /[video]

12.30 - 13.00 / RSS As An Easier Alternative To OAI-PMH For Sharing Bibliographic Information / Valeria Pesce, FAO [abstract]/[ppt]

13.00 - 13.30 / Will Web 2.0 Ever Meet Library Catalogs? / Andrea Marchitelli, CILEA [abstract]/[ppt]/[video]

The key note speech by Gerry McKiernan will be delivered in English, the other presentations will be delivered in Italian.

Source

[http://uniciber.it/index.php?id=486]

Source [Italian]

[http://uniciber.it/index.php?id=485]

CHE: Social Networks For The Green Campus

2009-02-12T18:19:00.031-06:00

Internal Communications at Washington State U. Go Paperless / Steve Kolowich / February 10, 2009

Washington State University has decided to go paperless for all internal communications on its four campuses, moving all memos, fliers, posters, and its weekly newspaper to cyberspace. “Experts have been predicting a transition to a paperless society for years,” wrote Elson S. Floyd, the university’s president, in a statement this afternoon. “Meanwhile, it seems that the piles of papers that cross our desks keep growing. We plan to reverse that trend.”

The decision, made official last month, comes amid an effort to trim $10-million from the university’s budget by June, with further cuts anticipated next year. [snip]

She also said that quitting paper cold turkey would encourage the university to to integrate Web 2.0 technologies—such as blogging and social networking—into its internal communications. “I’m sure we will find a lot of creativity spurred by this,” she said.

[snip]

At the same time, “it is really exciting to deliver the news in a new format,” he added. “We have to learn to use the tools of the Web and Web 2.0 effectively.

Source

[http://tinyurl.com/a9tfnu]

BTW: During the breakout session at our Sustainability Symposium held earlier this week

http://www.livegreen.iastate.edu/09/symposium/homepage.php

I had planned to suggest that various interlinked university social networks be created to facilitate communication, coordination, and cooperation amongst/between various individual, departmental, and administrative efforts but thought that The Idea would be considered Too Radical …

Little Did I Know That WSU Would See The (Potential) Benefit of Social Networks For Its Green Initiatives [:-)]

Web 2.0 and Libraries / Seminar / Rome, Italy / March 6 2009

2009-02-11T12:36:00.042-06:00

Web 2.0 and Libraries / Seminario di Aggiornamento

Università degli Studi di Roma Tre (Facoltà di Architettura) / Aula Urbano VIII / Via della Madonna dei Monti / 40 Roma / 6 marzo 2009 / h.9.00-13.30

Web 2.0 has posed a number of challenges for the library and marks a transition within the library world in the way that services are delivered to users. In the course of this seminar, organised by CASPUR /CIBER in collaboration with AIB Lazio, AIDA, CILEA, FAO and University of Rome Three Library System we will seek to describe how libraries have responded to the opportunities offered by Web 2.0 applications and how organisations can best exploit the potential which Library 2.0 can provide.

9.00 - 9.30 / Greetings and Introduction / Mary Joan Crowley, Università degliStudi di Roma "La Sapienza"

9.30 - 11.00 / The Future of The Library / Gerry McKiernan, Iowa State University Library

11.00 - 11.30 / Coffee break

11.30 - 12.00 / Q&A

12.00 - 12.30 / "Italian Library 2.0?": One question, many answers / Bonaria Biancu, Università di Milano Bicocca

12.30 - 13.00 / Aggregated News and Events on Agriculture: AgriFeeds / Valeria Pesce, FAO

13.00 - 13.30 / Will Web 2.0 ever meet library catalogs? / Andrea Marchitelli, CILEA

The keynote speech by Gerry McKiernan will be delivered in English, the other presentations will be delivered in Italian

The Participatory Web: Web 2.0 and The Future of The Library

As characterized by Wikipedia, “‘Web 2.0’ describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0]

Such ‘participatory’ technologies include not only blogging (e.g. Blogger), photo-sharing (e.g. Flickr), social bookmarking (e.g. Delicious), but folksonomies (e.g., tagging), online social networks (e.g., Facebook), video-sharing (e.g., YouTube), and wikis (e.g., Wikipedia).

In this ... [presentation] we provide an overview of several significant Web 2.0 technologies and profile numerous examples of libraries worldwide that have implemented these interactive technologies in their efforts to enhance collaboration and communication with their respective communities.

Source

[http://uniciber.it/index.php?id=486]

Free / Pre-registration Required

[http://uniciber.it/fileadmin/reg-convegno-web2/registration.php]

Facebook EVENT Page

[http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=59006449728]

This Seminar has been organized by Paola Gargiulo (CASPUR), Andrea Marchitelli (CILEA) and Imma Subirats (FAO of the United Nations)

Requests

While I will profile The Usual Web 2.0 Suspects in my presentation, I am also interested in promoting newer/emerging Web 2.0 technologies as well, and would appreciate Any and All Suggestions; Library implementations would be of special interest.

In addition to implementations by U.S. libraries, I am particularly interested in Web 2.0 implementations by libraries in non-U.S. regions (e.g., Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Oceania, etc.)

>>Please Post Your Suggestions As A Comment To This Posting<<

PPT PRESENTATION NOW AVAILABLE [3/17] AT

[http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/Rome2009.ppt]

>>THIS IS A LARGE PRESENTATION [185+ SLIDES]<<

THE A/V IS NOW AVAILABLE [3/20]

[http://uniciber.it/fileadmin/doc_imm2/web2.0-libraries/mckiernan.swf]

NOTE \ This Is A Shockwave Flash File / NOTE

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWF]

>>THIS IS A LONG PRESENTATION [~1.25 HOURS]<<

[We Conclude With A Profile Of Discussion Of WebQubed –

The Mixed And Mashed Web / MixedUp Web

AND

Introduce

>> The Quantum Web <<

Our Vision Of The Future Of The Web After WebQubed.

Given The Recent Article/Report About The Map Of Knowledge

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/science/16visuals.html]

I Don’t Think That _The Quantum Web_ Is That Far-Out … [:-)]

!!! I Wish To Thank :The Seminar Sponsors - CASPUR /CIBER AIB Lazio, AIDA, CILEA, FAO And University of Rome Three Library System For Their Support

AND

The Seminar Organizers - Paola Gargiulo (CASPUR), Andrea Marchitelli (CILEA)

and Imma Subirats (FAO of the United Nations)

For The Opportunity To Present !!!]

Coverage

[http://www.uniciber.it/fileadmin/doc_imm2/Varie/seminario6marzo_vers1.pdf]

An Extended Version Of This Presentation Was Given At The

David Lubin Memorial Library

The Food And Agriculture Organization Of The United Nations (FAO)

On March 5 2009

I Wish To Thank

Margaret Zito ( Director)

And

Jessica Mathewson (Reference)

And

Imma Subirats (IT)

For

Their Hospitality / Generosity

And For

The Opportunity To Present !!!

Five Years Of Facebook

2009-02-07T13:16:00.008-06:00

Weekend Edition Saturday, February 7, 2009

Scott Simon speaks with NPR's Social Media Strategist Andy Carvin about Facebook's fifth anniversary, and how social networking has changed how we use the Internet. (03:00)

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100377329&ft=1&f=1019]

Meebo Now Includes Chat From Facebook

2009-02-06T14:04:00.019-06:00

NYTimes / Bits / February 5, 2009 / 5:04 pm /Instant Messaging Site Meebo Adds Facebook Chat / By Brad Stone

For Internet users whose instant messaging proclivities span numerous systems -– AOL’s AIM, Yahoo Messenger and Microsoft Messenger, for example -– Meebo is a hugely useful tool.

Since 2005, the Mountain View, Calif., company has let people log into multiple messaging systems at the same time from within a Web browser. It’s much easier than opening up the desktop software programs of several IM systems and logging into them all at once.

Today, Meebo is getting even more useful, adding the popular Facebook Chat to the list of instant messaging systems it supports. [snip]

The move is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it sheds a little more light on how developers will be using Facebook Connect, which the company hopes to use to magnify Facebook’s influence across the Internet. For now, Meebo users will be able to conduct instantaneous text chats with their Facebook friends off the social network, and to browse the status updates of all their Facebook friends.

But subsequent versions of the integration with Facebook could let Meebo users see some of their friend’s Facebook profile information, publish stories into their news feeds on Facebook, or update their Facebook status remotely, ... [snip]

The move also underscores just how pervasive IMing with friends and colleagues is becoming, and how it is spreading out and being threaded directly into the fabric of the Web. An Internet user’s list of friends used to sit inside an instant messaging software program – something users opened each time they turned on their computer. Now people are forging connections across the Web, and the idea of listing all your friends in a software silo almost seems quaint. [snip]

[snip]

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/instant-messaging-site-meebo-adds-facebook-chat/]

Facebook As A Social Search Engine And The Implications For Libraries ...

2009-01-24T09:54:00.006-06:00

Facebook as a social search engine and the implications for libraries in the twenty-first century / Mark-Shane Scale

Library Hi Tech / 2008 / 26 (4) / pp. 540 - 556 / DOI: 10.1108/0737883081092088

Purpose

The primary objectives of this research paper are to explore the concept of social search, evaluate the performance of Facebook as a social search engine, and to understand the relationship between social networking sites (SNS) and social search. The author's intention is to examine the possibility that Facebook presents as the future of on-line search and the implications for libraries.

Design/methodology/approach

This study reviews the literature on SNSs, Facebook studies, and the concept of social search. It then explores Facebook as a social search engine through participant observation, personal experience and experiment. [snip]

Findings

Facebook as a people search engine, yields irrelevant results in response to search queries for unknown persons or groups. Facebook may also fail to provide timely and relevant results when attempting to get information from persons with whom the user has a weak relationship. [snip]

The findings are relevant for library and information science academics and professional practitioners.

Originality/value

The author provides an approach for evaluating the quality of information retrieval in social search using the traditional information retrieval evaluation methods of library and information scientists. [snip]

Select References

1. Arrington, M. (2007), "People search business just got more complicated as Facebook enters market", TechCrunch

3. Bennett, J. (2007), "What you like: the goal of social search is to combine Facebook's personal touch with Google's speed", Newswee
6. Buck, R. (2007), "Social search: what it is and why it's not going away", TechNewsWorld
7. Charnigo, L., Barnett-Ellis, P. (2007), "Checking out Facebook.com: the impact of a digital trend on academic libraries", Information Technology and Libraries, Vol.26, No. 1, pp 23-34
9. De Rosa, C., Cantrell, J., Havens, A., Hawk, J., Jenkins, L., Gauder, B., Limes, R., Cellentani, D. (2007), Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World: A Report to the OCLC Membership
13. Ellison, N.B., Steinfield, C., Lampe, C. (2007), "The benefits of Facebook ‘friends’: social capital and college students' use of online social network sites", Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Vol.12, No. 4,
17. Fox, V. (2007), "Searching for people in all the new social places", Information Today, Vol.24, No. 8, pp 25-
18. Harder, G. (2006), "Connecting the dots: social software and the social nature of libraries", Feliciter, Vol.52, No. 2, pp 54-5
19. Jin, Y., Ishizuka, M., Matsuo, Y. (2008), "Extracting inter-firm networks from the world wide web using a general-purpose search engine", Online Information Review, Vol.32, No. 2, pp 196-210
20. Jones, H., Soltren, J.H. (2005), "Facebook: threats to privacy"
23. Levy, S. (2007), "Facebook grows up", Newsweek, pp 41-
25. Mathews, B. (2007), "Online social networking", Library 2.0 and Beyond: Innovative Technologies and Tomorrow's user,
26. Raskin, R. (2006), "Facebook faces its future", Young Consumers, Vol.7, No. 2, pp 56-8
30. Sadeh, T. (2007), "Time for a change: new approaches for a new generation of library users", New Library World, Vol.108, No. 7/8, pp 307-16
31. Sharma, D. (2007), "Social search guide: 40+ social search engines", Mashable.com
32. Sherman, C. (2006), "What's the big deal with social search?", Search Engine Watch

34. Spink, A., Jansen, B.J., Pedersen, J. (2004), "Searching for people on web search engines", Journal of Documentation, Vol.60, No. 3, pp 266-78
38. Tancer, B. (2008), "Is Facebook the future of search?", Times,
39. Taylor, P. (2008), "Two faces of people search", FT.com
41. Watts, D.J., Dodds, P.S., Newman, M.E.J. (2002), "Identity and search in social networks", Science, Vol.296, No. 5571, pp 1302-

42. Yadav, S. (2006), "Facebook: the complete biography", Machable

Horizon Report 2009

2009-01-22T17:13:00.012-06:00

Horizon Report 2009 Profiles Six Key Emerging Technologies for Higher Education

Today the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) jointly released the 2009 Horizon Report at the ELI Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida. The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the NMC’s Horizon Project, a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education. A collaboration between the NMC and ELI, the 2009 Horizon Report is the sixth in the annual series.

Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years. “Campus leaders and practitioners alike use the report as a springboard for discussion around emerging technology,” noted Larry Johnson, chief executive officer of the NMC. “Over the six years that the report has been published, the impact on technology planning and discussions on campuses has been substantial. Now with six years of data to consider, we continue to look back at the overarching trends over time. What we see is that there are several long-term, conceptual themes that have affected, and continue to affect, the practice of teaching and learning in profound ways.” More than 75,000 copies of the 2008 Horizon Report were distributed in print and electronically last year.

According to EDUCAUSE President Diana Oblinger, “Learning, discovery, and creative expression are fundamental to higher education. Technology can help in each of those areas. But our community wants to know which emerging technologies are best for what uses. And, what examples demonstrate their potential? The Horizon Report addresses those critical questions.”
In defining the six selected areas for 2009 — mobile devices, cloud computing, geo-everything, the personal web, semantic-aware applications, and smart objects — the project tapped into an ongoing discussion among knowledgeable individuals in business, industry, and education, as well as published resources, current research and practice, and the expertise of the NMC and ELI communities. The Horizon Project’s Advisory Board probes current trends and challenges in higher education, explores possible topics for the report, and ultimately selects the technologies to be profiled.

To create the 2009 Horizon Report, the 45 members of the 2009 Advisory Board engaged in a comprehensive review and analysis of research, articles, papers, and interviews; discussed existing applications and brainstormed new ones; and ultimately ranked the items on the list of more than 80 technologies that emerged for their potential relevance to teaching, learning, and creative expression. The 2009 Advisory Board included representatives from eight countries — the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Board members conducted most of their work online during the fall of 2008 using a variety of collaboration tools, including a special wiki dedicated to the project.

The 32-page 2009 Horizon Report is available at no charge and has been released with a Creative Commons license to facilitate its widespread use, easy duplication, and broad distribution.

Source

[http://www.nmc.org/pdf/PR-2009-Horizon-Report.pdf]

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

■ Technologies to Watch
■ Key Trends
■ Critical Challenges
■ The Horizon Project

Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less

Mobiles

■ Overview
■ Relevance for Teaching, Learning, Research, or Creative Expression
■ Examples
■ For Further Reading

Cloud Computing

■ Overview
■ Relevance for Teaching, Learning, Research, or Creative Expression
■ Examples
■ For Further Reading

Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years

Geo-Everything

■ Overview
■ Relevance for Teaching, Learning, Research, or Creative Expression
■ Examples
■ For Further Reading

The Personal Web

■ Overview
■ Relevance for Teaching, Learning, Research, or Creative Expression
■ Examples
■ For Further Reading

Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years

Semantic-Aware Applications

■ Overview
■ Relevance for Teaching, Learning, Research, or Creative Expression
■ Examples
■ For Further Reading

Smart Objects

■ Overview
■ Relevance for Teaching, Learning, Research, or Creative Expression
■ Examples
■ For Further Reading

Methodology

2009 Horizon Project Advisory Board

Source and Full Text Available At

[http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2009-Horizon-Report.pdf]

[http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/] CommentPress / Web version

Videocast

[http://hosted.mediasite.com/hosted5/Viewer/?peid=ac311d35918948468f92deab20379246] (53:44)

News Coverage

'Horizon Report' Names Top Technology Trends to Watch in Education / Steve Kolowich / The Chronicle of Higher Education / Wired Campus

[http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3569/horizon-report-names-top-6-technology-trends-to-watch-in-education]

Related

Horizon Report 2008: The Video

[http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/01/horizon-report-2008-video.html]

The Horizon Report 2008: Social Operating Systems

[http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/01/horizon-report-2008-social-operating.html]

Horizon Report 2007: Social Networking

[http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2007/12/horizon-report-2007-social-networking.html]

Dissertation: Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society / Christian Fuchs

2009-01-20T15:28:00.012-06:00

Social Networking Sites and the Surveillance Society. A Critical Case Study of the Usage of studiVZ, Facebook, and MySpace by Students in Salzburg in the Context of Electronic Surveillance / Fuchs, Christian. 2009. Salzburg / Vienna: Research Group UTI. ISBN 978-3-200-01428. 145 pp.

studiVZ, Facebook. MySpace: First study on social networking sites in Austria

674 students from Salzburg participated in the study that was conducted by the eTheory Research Group (University of Salzburg, ICT&S Center). 88.3% of the respondents use studiVZ, 39.5% Facebook, 15.9% MySpace, 9.0% Xing, 7.4%Lokalisten. Each of 61 other social networking sites (SNS) is used by less than 1%. Study author associate professor Christian Fuchs: "There are indications for a strong economic concentration in the area of social networking sites. On the one hand concerning usage, but as a consequence on the other hand also in relation to profits that are made by advertising".

59.1% of the respondents see the maintenance of social contacts as the biggest advantage of SNS, 55.7% say that economic and political surveillance is the greatest risk. Fuchs: "Students are very aware of the massive collection of personal data on these platforms, they use them nonetheless because of the expected communicative advantages. This does not mean that they are incautious, but that there is a structural lack of alternative platforms. Non-commercial, non-profit SNS do not have to evaluate data for personalized advertisements, therefore the probability of surveillance and data abuse decreases. But such platforms are currently hardly existent or completely unknown, therefore young people – the main usage group of social networking sites – have to rely on commercial service providers that collect, store, and evaluate personal data in order to accumulate profits by targeted advertising".

81.8% of the respondents have little knowledge about concrete data surveillance in Europe (e.g. the Data Retention Directive or the Austrian Security Police Act). But 67.4% have a critical standpoint towards surveillance. 88.7% of the studiVZ users have good or very good knowledge about what happens with their data on the platform. The same is true for only 35.9% of Facebook users and 22.6% of MySpace users. Fuchs: "Students are generally critical towards surveillance, but they only have little concrete knowledge about the existing political regulations. Users' rather high degree of knowledge about studiVZ and their rather critical information behaviour on this platform, contrast with knowledge and information behaviour on Facebook and MySpace. This can be explained by the change of the terms of use that studiVZ undertook at the beginning of 2008 and that introduced targeted advertising. The introduction was accompanied by a self-organized information campaign that students conducted on the platform and public discussions that presented studiVZ as the 'sniffleVZ' (=SniffleDirectory). This campaign can be interpreted as a form of fragmented public. Its success was very limited. Nonetheless it has resulted in the fact that many students have read the new terms of use and have opted out of standard advertising options, which was not the case on other platforms".

The study recommends that citizens see commercial Internet platforms that store and evaluate personal data generally critically and that by establishing special consumer protection websites it could be documented in the public, which rights in dealing with personal data such platforms obtain by their terms of use and their privacy terms. Christian Fuchs: "There are many examples for how affected citizens try surveilling the surveillors with the help of websites. This can pose a certain degree of protection by making use of public information, but also has limits because the basic problem is that we live in times, in which on the one hand there are strong commercial interests in data collection and data evaluation and on the other hand after 9/11 continuously more political steps have been taken for creating surveillance societies. These are political-economic problems, not technological ones".

The expertise of the study will be part of the Europe-wide research project "Living in Surveillance Societies" of the European Science Foundation, in which Christian Fuchs represents Austria in the management committee.

Contact:
Priv.Doz. Dr. Christian Fuchs
Universität Salzburg
ICT&S Center
Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18
5020 Salzburg
christian.fuchs@sbg.ac.at
+43 662 8044 4823

Source

[http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at/SNS_E.html]

Full Text Available At

[http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at/SNS_Surveillance_Fuchs.pdf] / English

[http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at/SNS_D.html] / German

UnRelated/Related

Brazil (The Film)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(film)]

Dissertation: Taken Out of Context : American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics / danah boyd

2009-01-19T11:42:00.009-06:00

Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics / by danah michele boyd

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Information Management and Systems and the Designated Emphasis in New Media in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley / Fall 2008 / 406 pp.

Abstract

As social network sites like MySpace and Facebook emerged, American teenagers began adopting them as spaces to mark identity and socialize with peers. Teens leveraged these sites for a wide array of everyday social practices—gossiping, flirting, joking around, sharing information, and simply hanging out. While social network sites were predominantly used by teens as a peer-based social outlet, the unchartered nature of these sites generated fear among adults. This dissertation documents my 2.5-year ethnographic study of American teens’ engagement with social network sites and the ways in which their participation supported and complicated three practices—self-presentation, peer sociality, and negotiating adult society.

My analysis centers on how social network sites can be understood as networked publics which are simultaneously (1) the space constructed through networked technologies and (2) the imagined community that emerges as a result of the intersection of people, technology, and practice. Networked publics support many of the same practices as unmediated publics, but their structural differences often inflect practices in unique ways. Four properties—persistence, searchability, replicability, and scalability—and three dynamics—invisible audiences, collapsed contexts, and the blurring of public and private—are examined and woven throughout the discussion.

While teenagers primarily leverage social network sites to engage in common practices, the properties of these sites configured their practices and teens were forced to contend with the resultant dynamics. Often, in doing so, they reworked the technology for their purposes. As teenagers learned to navigate social network sites, they developed potent strategies for managing the complexities of and social awkwardness incurred by these sites. Their strategies reveal how new forms of social media are incorporated into everyday life, complicating some practices and reinforcing others. New technologies reshape public life, but teens’ engagement also reconfigures the technology itself.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1. My Project
1.1.1. Dissertation Organization
1.2. The Social Construction of Teenagers
1.3. Technology and Change
1.4. Locating Networked Publics
1.4.1. Public and Publics
1.4.2. Teenagers and Publics
1.4.3. Publics, Networked
1.5. The Structure of Networked Publics
1.5.1. Properties of Networked Publics
1.5.2. New Dynamics Resulting from Networked Publics

Chapter 2: Choose Your Own Ethnography

2.1. Ethnography in Context
2.1.1. Ethnography and the Internet
2.1.2. Networked Ethnography
2.2. My Field Site in and of Networks
2.2.1. From Youth to American Teenagers
2.2.2. From Networked Publics to MySpace and Facebook
2.2.3. From the United States to Teens’ Homes and IHOP
2.2.4. Locating Myself in My Field Site......
2.2.5. An Imperfect Field Site
2.3. My Data
2.3.1. Online Data and Observation
2.3.2. Interviews
2.3.3. Fieldwork in Less Structured Environments
2.3.4. External Data
2.3.5. Complexities of Online Data
2.4. Analyzing Relationships and Technology

Chapter 3: Social Network Sites and Social Media

3.1. The Rise of Social Network Sites
3.1.1. MySpace and Teens
3.1.2. Facebook and Teens
3.1.3. By the Numbers and in Practice
3.2. Participation in Context
3.2.1. Negotiating Multiple Communication Channels
3.2.2. Teen vs. Adult Social Media Practices

Chapter 4: Writing Oneself into Being

4.1. Locating Identity
4.2. Writing Identity into Being Online
4.3. The Art of Profile Creation and Management
4.3.1. Techniques for Self-Presentation
4.3.2. Bedroom Culture and Fashion
4.3.3. Varying Degrees of Participation
4.4. Self-Presentations in Context
4.5. Performing Falsehoods—Deception, Play, or Control?
4.5.1. Motivations for Providing Inaccurate Information
4.5.2. Legal and Technical Limitations
4.5.3. Safety through Inaccuracy
4.6. Controlling Access: Public or Private?
4.7. Managing Identity in Networked Publics

Chapter 5: Friendship, Status, and Peer Worlds

5.1. Peer Relations and Teen Friendship
5.2. Pressure to Participate: Signing Up and Opting Out
5.2.1. Pressure to Join
5.2.2. Failure to Engage
5.3. MySpace vs. Facebook: Social Categories and Networked Turf
5.3.1. Adoption Practices
5.3.2. Distinctions and Social Categories
5.3.3. Reinforcing Offline Social Categories
5.3.4. Status and Digital Fashion
5.4. Public Displays of Connection and Status
5.4.1. Strategies for Friending
5.4.2. Hierarchies of Friends
5.5. Status Battles and Peer Dramas
5.6. Peer Sociality in Networked Publics

Chapter 6: Power and Control

6.1. Social and Structural Controls
6.2. Contemporary Adult-Teen Dynamics
6.2.1. Household Dynamics
6.2.2. Engaging with Teachers, Youth Pastors, and Other Trusted Adults
6.3. Fears and Moral Panics
6.3.1. The MySpace Moral Panic
6.3.2. Teen Responses to a Culture of Fear
6.4. Access, Privacy, and Control
6.4.1. Restricting Access and Mobility
6.4.2. Limiting Privacy
6.4.3. Network Effects of Control
6.5. In the Pursuit of Freedom

Chapter 7: Lasting Impressions

7.1. Lessons from the Everyday Lives of Teens
7.2. The Significance of Publics
7.3. The Future of Networked Publics

Bibliography

Appendix 1: Brief Descriptions of Teens
Appendix 2: Features and Functionality
Appendix 3: Creative Commons License

Source

[http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf]

dana boyd Links

[http://www.danah.org/]

Pew Report: Adults and Social Network Websites

2009-01-14T17:23:00.016-06:00

PEW INTERNET PROJECT DATA MEMO
Adults and Social Network Websites
1/14/2009 // Memo // Amanda Lenhart

The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years -- from 8% in 2005 to 35% now, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project's December 2008 tracking survey.

While media coverage and policy attention focus heavily on how children and young adults use social network sites, adults still make up the bulk of the users of these websites. Adults make up a larger portion of the US population than teens, which is why the 35% number represents a larger number of users than the 65% of online teens who also use online social networks.
Still, younger online adults are much more likely than their older counterparts to use social networks, with 75% of adults 18-24 using these networks, compared to just 7% of adults 65 and older. At its core, use of online social networks is still a phenomenon of the young.
Overall, personal use of social networks seems to be more prevalent than professional use of networks, both in the orientation of the networks that adults choose to use as well as the reasons they give for using the applications. Most adults, like teens, are using online social networks to connect with people they already know.
When users do use social networks for professional and personal reasons, they will often maintain multiple profiles, generally on different sites.

Most, but not all adult social network users are privacy conscious; 60% of adult social network users restrict access to their profiles so that only their friends can see it, and 58% of adult social network users restrict access to certain content within their profile.

Full Report Available

[http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Adult_social_networking_data_memo_FINAL.pdf]

Source

[http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/272/report_display.asp]

Webinar: The Social Library – Beyond the Traditional OPAC

2009-01-13T20:05:00.022-06:00

The Social Library – Beyond the Traditional OPAC

Join Inmagic CTO, Phil Green, to learn about the next generation special library – The Social Library. Learn how the latest advances in Social Knowledge Networks are expanding the reach of libraries and enhancing collections through the integration of library workflow, information publishing and new social media capabilities.

See firsthand how Inmagic® Presto for Social Libraries is transforming libraries into collaboration centers where both the librarian and researcher contribute to the catalog in a controlled, secure environment. The creation of a SOPAC (Social Online Public Access Catalog) allows for secure two-way information exchanges. The result is enriched and improved content, providing the following benefits:

Improve productivity
Improve collaboration and community building
A ‘Single Source of Truth’ for your organization’s knowledge Transform the library from a cost center to productivity center

Greater return-on-investment from library and research assets

Date: Wednesday, January 28th 2009 / Time: 2pm - 3pm, EST

Space Is Limited - Register NOW!

[https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/890755326]

News Coverage

Social Libraries: The Next Generation of Knowledge Management / Phillip Green / Information Outlook / 12 (12) / 12-08

[http://www.sla.org/io/2008/12/638.cfm] [Complete Article Available to Subscribers]

Related

Inmagic® Presto: A Social Knowledge Management Platform

[http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/09/inmagic-presto-is-social-knowledge.html]

Report: Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies

2009-01-13T18:36:00.017-06:00

Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies

Final Report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to the Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking of State Attorneys General of the United States

Published January 14, 2009

Authored by John Palfrey, Dena Sacco, danah boyd, Laura DeBonis, Internet Safety Technical Task Force

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was a group of Internet businesses, non-profit organizations, academics, and technology companies that joined together to identify effective tools and technologies to create a safer environment on the Internet for youth. It was created in February 2008 in accordance with the "Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety" announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace. The Task Force was directed by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. It submitted its Final Report to the Attorneys General in December, 2008.

[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2009/ISTTF_Final_Report]

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace. The scope of the Task Force's inquiry was to consider those technologies that industry and end users - including parents - can use to help keep minors safer on the Internet.

Source

[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2009/ISTTF_Final_Report]

Download the Final Report

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace. The scope of the Task Force's inquiry was to consider those technologies that industry and end users - including parents - can use to help keep minors safer on the Internet.

Executive Summary (51KB PDF)
Full Report, including Executive Summary and Appendices (2.7MB PDF)
Appendix A: Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety (400KB PDF)
Appendix B: Task Force Project Plan (50KB PDF)
Appendix C: Literature Review from the Research Advisory Board (266KB PDF)
Appendix D: Report of the Technology Advisory Board and Exhibits (419KB PDF)
Appendix E: Submissions from Social Network Sites (1MB PDF)

Appendix F: Statements from Members of the Task Force (600KB PDF)

Source

[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/isttf/]

Also Available As A Navigable Document

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/10276242/Enhancing-Child-Safety-and-Online-Technologies]

News Coverage

Chronicle of Higher Education / Wired Campus / January 13 2009 / Report Weighs the Benefits and Risks of Social Networks

[http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3554/guest-blogger-report-weighs-the-benefits-and-risks-of-social-networks]

New York Times / Internet / January 13 2009 / Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/technology/internet/14cyberweb.html]

New Book: Online Social Networking on Campus

2009-01-08T10:26:00.010-06:00

Online Social Networking on Campus: Understanding What Matters in Student Culture

By Ana M. Martínez Alemán, Katherine Lynk Wartman
Price: $44.95
ISBN: 978-0-415-99020-2
Paperback (also available in Hardback)
Published by: Routledge
Publication Date: 24th November 2008
Pages: 168

About the Book

In the era of such online spaces as Facebook, Instant Messenger, Live Journal, Blogger, Web Shots, and campus blogs, college students are using these resources and other online sites as a social medium. Inevitably, this medium presents students with ethical decisions about social propriety, self disclosure and acceptable behaviour. Because online social networking sites have proven problematic for college students and for college administrators, this book aims to offer professional guidance to Higher Education administrators and policy makers.

Online Social Networking on Campus: Understanding What Matters in Student Culture is a professional guide for Higher Education faculty and Student Affairs administrators, which rigorously examines college students’ use of online social networking sites and how they use these to develop relationships both on and off campus. Most importantly, Online Social Networking on Campus investigates how college students use online sites to explore and makes sense of their identities. Providing information taken from interviews, surveys and focus group data, the book presents an ethnographic view of social networking that will help Student Affairs administrators, Information Technology administrators, and faculty better understand and provide guidance to the "neomillennials" on their campuses.

Table Of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction: Campus Life Online

Chapter 2 Emergence and Acceleration: Computer-Mediated Communication and the College Student

The rise of the technological generation and the construction of individual identity and college culture
Internet history and use
Development of online social networking sites
Social networking sites as cultural phenomenon: Generally and on campus
College Student Identity: Issues and research on online social networking sites

Chapter 3 Students Speak: Campus Culture, Identity and Facebook

Facebook Primer
What Students Report about Their Facebook Use
Student Portraits / Kris / Jordan / Teresa / Matthew
Our Observations

Chapter 4 The New Campus Reality: Facebook and Student Affairs Practice

Do Administrators Belong on Facebook?
Student Leaders as Cultural Translators
Orienting Students to Campus Culture, both Real and Online
Supporting Student Development in the Expanding Campus Community

Chapter 5 The Future of the Campus Social Graph

What is the future of online social networking on campus?
Changing demographic of Facebook and Online Social Networks
Global Growth
New Niche Users
Post Script

References

Glossary

Index

About the Author(s)

Ana M. Martínez Alemán is Associate Professor of Education and Chair of the Department of Educational Administration and Higher Education at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Higher Education, the Review of Higher Education, Educational Theory, and Teachers College Record, and other scholarly journals. She has contributed to Women in Academe: The Unfinished Agenda (2008), Gendered Futures in Higher Education: Critical Perspectives for Change (2003) and Feminist Interpretations of John Dewey (2002). She is the co-author (with Kristen A. Renn) of Women in Higher Education: An Encyclopedia (2002).

Katherine Lynk Wartman is a PhD candidate at Boston College where her research interests include college student culture, the first-year experience, college access, and the parent-student relationship. She is also a resident director at Simmons College in Boston, MA and has served as Parent and Family Relations and Special Projects Administrator at Colby-Sawyer College. She is the co-author (with Marjorie B. Savage) of Parental Involvement in Higher Education; Understanding the Relationship among Students, Parents, and the Institution (2008), a volume in the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) Higher Education Report Series.

Source

[http://www.routledgeeducation.com/books/Online-Social-Networking-on-Campus-isbn9780415990202]

News Coverage

‘Online Social Networking on Campus’ / Inside Higher Ed / JAN. 8 2009

Student affairs administrators are increasingly debating how to use Facebook and other social networking tools — and whether and how to monitor student use. A new book — Online Social Networking on Campus: Understanding What Matters in Student Culture (Routledge) — aims to offer some guidance. The authors are Ana M. Martínez Alemán, chair of educational administration and higher education at Boston College, and Katherine Lynk Wartman, resident director at Simmons College and a Ph.D. candidate at Boston College. Alemán responded to e-mail questions about the book.

[http://insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/08/network]

EPI Theme Issue: Social Networks

2009-01-03T13:32:00.016-06:00

El Profesional de la Información / 17 (6) / November - December / 2008

Theme Issue: Redes Sociales

Observatorio

Redes sociales: ¿modelos organizativos o servicios digitales? / Juan Freire

Abstract
We are social beings and we have been creating networks since our inception. The network represents a new paradigm for social and economic development that has been called the “Network Society”. People who use digital tools intensively are fragmenting their identity into multiple local and global networks. The social network services are a simplification and a restriction of the variety of social interactions. The combination of various Web 2.0 tools seems more interesting than the Facebook model.

Artículos

Las bibliotecas universitarias y Facebook: cómo y por qué estar presentes / Didac Margaix

Abstract
Over the past year, the popularity of social networking sites has seen tremendous-growth in Spain. Because of these networks’ everyday online ubiquity, the rising number of new users, and the integration of library applications, information professionals have taken a huge interest in social networking sites. This article analyzes the concept behind social networking sites, different types of these sites, the use of Facebook as an academic library, and the creation of Facebook pages as the best presence model for libraries. The final part of the article discusses how to create and promote a Facebook page and how to organize events on the web site.

Análisis estructural de una red social en línea: la red española de Flickr / José-Luis Ortega, Isidro-F Aguillo

Abstract
This paper intends, from a structural point of view, to analyse the network of Flickr’s members who live or were born in Spain. The aim of the study is to know how the network evolves, what is its shape, what groups are detected and what uses are carried out within the network. We identified 663 Flickr members through a double snowball process and harvested their joining date, photos and contacts with a crawler. The results show that the users who joined Flickr in 2004 use the service as a communication medium among amateur photographers, while the subsequent members utilise Flickr as a real social network, using the photos as a way to express personal experiences, opinions and tastes

Animación de la evolución de la revista Social networks en el tiempo utilizando una extensión dinámica del escalado multidimensional / Loet Leydesdorff, Thomas Schank, Andrea Scharnhorst, Wouter de Nooy

Abstract
This paper intends, from a structural point of view, to analyse the network of Flickr’s members who live or were born in Spain. The aim of the study is to know how the network evolves, what is its shape, what groups are detected and what uses are carried out within the network. We identified 663Flickr members through a double snowball process and harvested their joining date, photos and contacts with a crawler. The results show that the users who joined Flickr in 2004 use the service as a communication medium among amateur photographers, while the subsequent members utilise Flickr as a real social network, using the photos as a way to express personal experiences, opinions and tastes.

Evolución social y networking en la comunidad biblio-documental / Fernanda Peset, Antonia Ferrer-Sapena, Tomàs Baiget

Abstract
Our society is increasingly interconnected through multiple types of networks, and human kind is changing their habits accordingly, adapting to the use of new technologies. We explore the psycho-social characteristics that determine people’s behavior through the communication channels. We discuss some structures of networking in the field of Library and Information Science: mailing lists, directories, etc. We conclude that the work of the information professional fits perfectly in the current wave 2.0 of information sharing.

Análisis de co-términos y de redes sociales para la generación de mapas temáticos / Sandra Miguel, Lorena Caprile, Israel Jorquera-Vidal

Abstract
Improvement of the interfaces and search capacities of the opacs continues to be one of the main challenges for libraries, especially with regard to searching by subject. The visual interfaces can help with retrieval. This paper explores the combination of co-term analysis techniques with social networks for the generation of subject maps of collections. The main conclusion is that the methodology applied is valid, and that the maps could be used for browsing and subject retrieval. It would also be useful for improving the quality of indexing.

[snip]

Análisis

El campus de la Universidad Carlos III en Second Life / Francisco López-Hernández

Abstract
Second Life is a three-dimensional virtual environment that many consider merely a game but it has enormous possibilities for e-learning and communication. There are academic libraries that are trying to take advantage of it; the Universidad Carlos III Library is one of them. This paper presents its project, with which it expects to anticipate that which very probably will be the future way of displaying information on the internet: 3D web.

Redes en bibliotecas digitales, una visión personal / Thomas Krichel

Abstract
This is a personal introduction to the relationship between digital libraries and networks. I recall the way I came to the subject of networks. I describe the way that I have tried to harness networks for digital library building. And I point out some of the difficulties in networking digital objects and their descriptions indigital libraries

Introducción al análisis de redes /Antonio Perianes-Rodríguez, Carlos Olmeda-Gómez, Félix de Moya-Anegón

Abstract
Despite its long existence and international acceptance, network theory and analysis is a practically unknown approach in Documentation, both theoretically and methodologically speaking. Fortunately, this trend is changing, inasmuch as network theory and analysis may mean a quantitative and qualitative leap forward in the representation and analysis of the structure of all types of scientific domains, whether geographic, thematic or institutional. The extraordinary advances that have taken place in recent years in the study and analysis of complex networks have been made possible by a number of parallel developments. First of all, with computerized data acquisition and handling, large databases can bemanaged, leading to the emergence of different real network topologies. Secondly, the increase in computing power has made it possible to explore networks with millions of nodes. Thirdly, there is the slow but sure breakdown of boundaries between disciplines. This can be seen by researchers because of their ability to access and use databases that facilitate an understanding of the generic properties of complex networks.

Facebook como red de profesionales de bibliotecología, documentación y archivística en Iberoamérica / Alejandro Uribe-Tirado, Andrés-Felipe Echavarría-Ramírez

Abstract
Results of a qualitative-quantitative analysis of the use that professionals and organizations related to librarianship, documentation and archives in Latin America are making of Facebook are compared with other social networking platforms. More than a tool for interacting with friends and family, it is suitable for creating community and establishing business and labor contacts. The analysis confirms the cultural and technological trend of people increasingly seeking “convergence”, defined as the ability to adapt and use a technological tool for a variety of purposes, using Facebook both as a means of social interaction (friends, relatives, fellow students, etc.) and for professional and labor interactions, thus taking on different roles.

[snip]

Reseñas

Mark Zuckerberg, fundador de Facebook, en la Universidad de Navarra / Daniel Torres-Salinas

Abstract
With more than a hundred million users, Facebook is one of the largest social networks in internet. For its promotion in Europe its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, made a tour of various countries. In this context, we offer a chronicle of the conference held at the University of Navarra in October 2008. During the conference, Zuckerberg talked about the history of Facebook and its main innovations, such as the news feed or its interoperability with other applications. The question and answer session included discussion of censorship of content by Facebook, the new interface, and competition with other social networks.

Redes, publicación científica e innovación en el LIS-EPI Meeting 2008 / Sílvia Redondo

Abstract
Report on the 3rd International LIS-EPI Meeting 2008 which was held in Valencia, organized by the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV), Profesional de la Información (EPI) and the Innovation department of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). The topics covered were the knowledge nets, the repositories, the scientific journals and the web 2.0 and the innovation applied on contents and platforms.

Sobre la sociedad red / Antonia Ferrer-Sapena, Javier Guallar

Abstract
Chronicle of the course “Network Society: Social Changes, Organizations and Citizens” (Barcelona, October 15-17 2008). The topics covered were the state of development on the Network Society, organizations, citizenry, communication and innovation.

Source

[http://www.elprofesionaldelainformacion.com/]

Related

Facebook Group

[http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=36050316757]

Code4Lib: Reaching Users Through Facebook

2008-12-15T14:06:00.015-06:00

Reaching Users Through Facebook: A Guide to Implementing Facebook Athenaeum

By Wayne Graham / The Code4Lib Journal / Issue 5, 2008-12-15

Facebook Athenaeum is an open source application that integrates library resources directly into the Facebook website. Facebook is one of the single most-visited websites in the world, and its popularity among college-aged students provides a unique opportunity for libraries to redefine how they interact with students. This article walks you through the deployment Facebook Athenaeum, and discusses some of the usage trends and pitfalls of deploying applications using the Facebook API.

Introduction

In 2007, Facebook was positioning itself to overtake MySpace as the number one social website. Until this point, Facebook had only been available to higher-education institutions, but they were in the process of opening the site up to all users and rolling out an API to allow developers to create “useful” applications. Seeing an opportunity to provide our own “useful” social application, we set out to integrate an existing tool developed by Tom MacWright, a student at William and Mary, with our library’s RSS feeds and catalog/website search.

MacWright developed a nifty little application that allows users to click on a map of the library and generate an IM status link (or anything else that accepted a hyperlink) so your friends could see where you were located [http://swem.wm.edu/services/swemsignal/]. Swem Signal was used by quite a few students, and we even got the code donated to the library to run on our servers. After the Facebook API launched, we thought Swem Signal would be a really cool social feature to integrate into a library Facebook application. The real impetus, however, was to expose our search tools to users who may spend more time socializing than studying.

[http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2353458796]

[more]

Conclusion

Road Map

What does the future hold for Facebook Athenaeum? Well, one of the features we want to work on is integrating with VuFind (http://www.vufind.org) to pull search results from VuFind into the Facebook application. As VuFind grows to enable libraries to index and search more diverse content types (it currently supports indexing MARC content), all of this will also be directly available through Facebook. The other big item on the roadmap is to migrate the database storage from a relational database system to Facebook’s Data Store API. This will allow you to keep most of the user interactions directly on Facebook’s cloud, decreasing the number of resources this application consumes.

[snip]

So, should your library have a presence in Facebook? I am perhaps biased, but I think the site provides a unique opportunity for libraries to redefine how they interact with students and how libaries can facilitate the interaction between students. I’ll be quite honest though, when the Facebook site first launched and I created my account, I really did not see what the point was, and I know I am not the only one who had this reaction. What brought me around was seeing just how many students actually use the site on a daily basis. Being able to interact with these students on a platform they are comfortable with seemed like a natural extension of what the library has traditionally done in developing its web content and outreach activities. We have further found that when we advertise an event on Facebook, we get far more participation than we do through posters, news feeds, and other outlets.

About the Author

Wayne Graham is the Coordinator of Emerging Technology at the Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of Facebook API Developer’s Guide (APress, 2008) and contributes code to the Vufind and Solrmarc projects. Wayne occasionally blogs at http://www.liquidfoot.com, and you can always shoot him a note on Facebook.

Source and Fulltext

[http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/490]

Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web

2008-11-30T19:24:00.008-06:00

NY Times December 1, 2008

Facebook Aims to Extend Its Reach Across the Web

By BRAD STONE

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Facebook, the Internet’s largest social network, wants to let you take your friends with you as you travel the Web. [snip]

Facebook Connect, as the company’s new feature is called, allows its members to log onto other Web sites using their Facebook identification and see their friends’ activities on those sites. Like Beacon, the controversial advertising program that Facebook introduced and then withdrew last year after it raised a hullabaloo over privacy, Connect also gives members the opportunity to broadcast their actions on those sites to their friends on Facebook.
In the next few weeks, a number of prominent Web sites will weave this service into their pages, including those of the Discovery Channel and The San Francisco Chronicle, the social news site Digg, the genealogy network Geni and the online video hub Hulu.
[snip]

For example, a person might alert his Facebook friends to the fact that he is watching a video on CBS.com and invite them to join him there to watch together and discuss the video as it plays.

“Everyone is looking for ways to make their Web sites more social,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer. “They can build their own social capabilities, but what will be more useful for them is building on top of a social system that people are already wedded to.”

MySpace, Yahoo and Google have all announced similar programs this year, using common standards that will allow other Web sites to reduce the work needed to embrace each identity system. Facebook, which is using its own data-sharing technology, is slightly ahead of its rivals.

[snip]

This is where Facebook Connect could help. No money changes hands between Facebook and the sites using Connect, and executives are wary of discussing how it could bring in revenue.

But there are some obvious possibilities.

Facebook has detailed information about its users: their real identities, what they like and dislike and whom they associate with. With a member’s permission, it could use that data to help other Web sites deliver more personalized ads. Similarly, those sites could tell Facebook what its users are doing elsewhere, helping to make its own ads more targeted.

“It’s becoming very clear that advertisers don’t know how to advertise on Facebook,” said Charlene Li, an independent consultant and social media analyst. “But if you take a group of Facebook friends and put them on a travel site where they are spending more time and generating more ad dollars in a focused area like travel, that is an opportunity ripe for getting revenues back and sharing it.”

[snip]

For now, Facebook is also carefully authorizing each partner in the Connect program and reviewing how it will use data on Facebook members and discuss the feature publicly. It plans to allow Web sites to register themselves for Connect, without having to seek approval, in the next few weeks.

[snip]

When asked about the potential promises and pitfalls of Connect, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, said: “We want to make the experience as lightweight and easy to use as possible. But we also have to make sure that people understand what’s going on and have control over it.”

[snip]

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/technology/internet/01facebook.htm]

Forrester Report: Social Networks Should Find 'Significant Success' In Enterprise

2008-11-06T16:27:00.014-06:00

Wikis, social networks should find 'significant success' in enterprise

Study says other Web 2.0 tools will take longer to be seen as cost effective by IT managers / Heather Havenstein / November 5, 2008 (Computerworld)

While enterprises face growing demands from employees for the Web 2.0 tools they use at home, IT managers continue to doubt whether most of them can provide business value to a company, according to a Forrester Research Inc. report released this week.

The report suggests that only two of the myriad tools commonly grouped in the Enterprise 2.0 category -- social networks and wikis -- will find significant success in the corporate market over the next few years. Widgets, mashups, blogs, RSS and forums may find moderate success, while microblogs, prediction markets, social bookmarking and podcasts will have only minimum penetration in the enterprise, the report said.

"Wikis in particular have proven themselves to be successful," noted Gil Yehuda, a Forrester analyst and author of the "Forrester TechRadar for Information and Knowledge Management Pros: Enterprise 2.0" report. "For the most part, they have proven themselves more so than many of the other Web 2.0 tools." The report predicts that social networks will find corporate success as users seek to find out more about colleagues who create and use the corporate content they are interested in, he added.

[snip]

Source

[http://tinyurl.com/6neyov]

PDF Available / Price: US $379

[http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,46894,00.html]

Not All Social Network Users Alike – Four Types of LinkedIn Users ...

2008-11-05T17:09:00.009-06:00

First Ever Public Study Concerning Business Oriented Social Network Giant LinkedIn.com

Stamford, CT – November 5, 2008 – In the real world, different business people conduct business differently with their own strategies and tactics. Online, business people use Social Network Services (SNS), like the highly popular professional networking site LinkedIn, very differently too.

According to Anderson Analytics, the company that conducted the study in partnership with LinkedIn.com, using state of the art predictive analytics software from SPSS Inc., LinkedIn users tend to fall into four major types:

“Savvy Networkers” (est. 9 million) are likely to have started using social networking earlier than others, are more tech savvy, and more likely to be active on other SNS sites like Facebook. Savvy Networkers have the most connections (61 on average) and are more likely than other segments to use LinkedIn for a wide variety of purposes other than job searching. Savvy Networkers have the second highest average personal income ($93,500) and may often have the word “Consultant” in their job description.

“Senior Executives” (est. 8.4 million) are somewhat less tech savvy and is using LinkedIn to connect to their existing corporate networks. They have power jobs which they are quite content with, and are likely to have been invited by a colleague and then realized how many key contacts were on the site and started building connections (32 on average). Senior Executives have the highest average personal income ($104,000) and have titles such as Owner, Partner, Executive, or Associate.

“Late Adopters” (est. 6.6 million) are likely to have received numerous requests from friends and co-workers before deciding to join. They are somewhat less tech savvy and are careful in how they use LinkedIn, tending to connect only to close friends and colleagues and have the fewest number of connections (23 on average). Late Adopters have the lowest average personal income ($88,000) and have titles such as Teacher, Medical Professional, Lawyer, or the word “Account” or “Assistant” in their job description.

“Exploring Options” (est. 6.1 million) may be working, but are open and looking for other job options often on CareerBuilder.com, perhaps in part because they have the lowest average personal income ($87,500). They are fairly tech savvy and use SNS for both corporate and personal interests.

To find out which type you are most like, you may use the predictive tool available at Anderson Analytics [http://www.andersonanalytics.com/litype]

[snip]

Some of the findings include:
Most users connect to people they know, including those they’ve met only over the phone
Users like the professional and business oriented look and feel of LinkedIn compared to other SNS
Users tend to be more senior (56% are “individual contributors”, 16% are management level, and 28% are director/VP level or above) The majority (66%) are decision makers or have influence in the purchase decisions at their companies (decision makers also tend to be more active on LinkedIn)
And perhaps most interestingly, the greater the number of connections the greater the likelihood of higher personal income - those with personal incomes between $200K-$350K were seven times more likely than others to have over 150 connections!
[snip]
Study Methodology

Total sample size of the study consisted of 65,873 records and provides statistics with an accuracy of +/-0.39%. Supplemental survey results represent +/-3.48% at the 95% confidence interval.

About Anderson Analytics

More than market research, Anderson Analytics is the first Next Generation marketing consultancy to combine new technologies, such as data and text mining with traditional market research. [snip] For more information, please visit http://www.andersonanalytics.com

Source

[http://tinyurl.com/57hyar]

PDF Version Of Press Release Available At

[http://tinyurl.com/66fpuh]

AMI Partners Study: Small Businesses Embrace Social Networking In The U.S.

2008-11-04T17:36:00.020-06:00

The number of small businesses using such services will double in the next 12 months, says AMI.

New York, New York—November 3, 2008—More than 600,000 small businesses (SBs, or companies with up to 99 employees) in the United States will deploy integrated social networking services in the next 12 months—up from about 300,000 currently, according to the latest study by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

In percentage terms, 300,000 represents about 5% of the total number of SBs in the U.S. "As social networking evolves, we can see the emergence of targeted offerings for business users," says Nikki Lamba, New York-based analyst at AMI Partners. "In order to attract a greater share of SBs, social networking services must provide customized services that SBs can leverage in order to realize their business goals."

[snip]

The study also points out that over the next 12 months about 500,000 SBs will use social networking as a resource for advertising and promotional activities. As the number of social networking sites continues to multiply, particularly those aimed at SBs, the prospects of targeted advertising continue to remain positive. SBs can also tailor their social networking to create a stronger brand for their business and allow for communities to form around their product or service offering.

"As SBs struggle with the current economic downturn, business-focused social networking offers an effective, relatively inexpensive and lucrative opportunity to keep steady communication with existing partners and clients as well as incubating new relationships," says Ms. Lamba. "A growing number of businesses are already riding the wave and stand to gain from continued usage of social networking for business purposes. Those businesses not currently using social networking services will find that the resources available will be especially useful in competing under current market conditions."

[snip]

About the Study

AMI’s US Small Business Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment study highlights these and other major trends in the context of current/planned IT, Internet and communications usage and spending. Products and services covered include established and emerging hardware, software, applications and business process solutions.

Based on AMI’s annual survey of SMBs in the U.S., the studies track a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to budgets, purchase behaviors, decision influencers, channel preferences, outsourcing, service and support. Also covered are detailed firmographics and critically important technology attitudes and strategic planning priorities. This data points to key opportunities and messaging hot buttons for vendors and service providers seeking to match their offerings to SB market requirements.

For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com, or visit us at http://www.ami-partners.com.

Source

[http://www.ami-partners.com/ami/sections/Press/11-03-08_Social_Networking_USSB_w-slide.pdf]

Not Just Facebook: Online Social Networks For Libraries

2008-11-03T14:17:00.017-06:00

Colleagues/
I’m pleased to announce that a corrected / revised / expanded version of my pre-conference workshop presentation for Internet Librarian 2008 (October 18 2008) is now available:

_Not Just Facebook: Online Social Networks For Libraries_

[http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/IL2008-DC.ppt]

ABSTRACT

While Bebo, Facebook, hi5, MySpace, and Orkut are among the better-known general online social networks, there is an ever-increasing number of online networks that have emerged for and within a wide variety of communities. Among many others, these include networks for academe and education (e.g., EduSpaces), people of color (e.g., Black Planet), Boomers (e.g., Boomj), business (e.g., Linked-In), LGBT groups (e.g., OUTeverywhere), religion (e.g., MyChurch), and researchers and scholars (e.g., Nature Network).

This workshop provides an overview of the more significant niche online social networks, reviews their common and unique features and functionalities, and considers the potential opportunities for wider engaged library outreach to these communities.

OUTLINE

Web 2.0
Social Networking Services
Facebook
Librarian Facebook Presence
Library Facebook Presence
Facebook Library Groups
Facebook Pages
Facebook Applications
Facebook Apps for Libraries
NICHE Online Social Networks
Academe and Education
Books
Boomers
Business
Lesbian / Gay / Bisexual / Transgender
People of Color
Religion
Researchers and Scientists
Second Life
Ning
Mega-Sites
News
Library Outreach

Demonstration (Ning)

This is a LARGE Presentation (204 Slides).

The First Half Is Devoted To Web 2.0/SNS Background and a Review Of Facebook (Slides 1-89);

The Second Half Is Devoted To Niche Online Social Networks (NSNS) (Slide 90->).

[http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/IL2008-DC.ppt]

BTW: I am greatly interested in learning of Other Niche SNS /

Please Nominate Any And All As A Comment On The Blog Entry

Thanks!

/Gerry

Harnessing the Power and Potential of Social Networks

2008-10-31T17:57:00.018-05:00

Harnessing the Power and Potential of Social Networks

Research and Markets / Guinness Centre, Taylors Lane, Dublin 8, Ireland / October 31 2008.

Todays corporations are keen to invest in promising social network technologies and services. IT departments are being called upon to help their organizations embrace this emerging trend. However, in order to harness the opportunities social networks present, you must first gain a deeper knowledge of social networks, including an understanding of how they work and their inherent power.

Harnessing the Power and Potential of Social Networks examines how social networks are evolving and discusses their power and potential -- things you need to know before you define your corporate social networking strategy. This report takes a comprehensive look at social networks and reviews some of their major applications. It then explores what social networks have to offer IT professionals, enterprises, and entrepreneurs. Finally, it discusses some of the limitations and risks involved with social networks, such as harnessing social networks for advertising.

This report will help you:

- Make use of social networks in your own organization for internal and customer-facing applications
- Explore the key characteristics of successful social networking sites
- Determine which approach to take when creating your social network
- Consider new value-added features and services that will be competitive differentiators for your social network
- Gain an understanding of the staggering valuation of sites such as Facebook
- Create a trusted social network environment
- Identify some of the privacy and security problems encountered by users
- Appreciate the draw of social networks for the individual, including the desire to develop ones own social capital for personal and professional goals
- Leverage social network analysis and the 'social graph'
- Identify how IT can help address the risks and challenges of social networks

Youll explore 7 key requirements to building and maintaining a powerful social network. Youll gain an overview of related 'social' terms that harness the collective contribution of users, such as social bookmarking, social citations, social computing, and more. And youll learn how to build the infrastructure needed for searching and mining information scattered in social networks.

Plus, youll discover how to avoid online manipulation, misrepresentation, and anonymous sock puppeting in social networks. And youll explore the dark side of social networks, including dangers, risks, and privacy and security issues.

Finally, this report looks at the future of social networks, identifying and discussing several yet-to-be explored trends and potential opportunities. It considers the emergence of A-list, invitation-only social networks and it explores various business and professional social networks, such as Doostang, LinkedIn, SiliconIndia, and others.

Table Of Contents

Chapter 1. Your Guide to Understanding the Evolution, Power, and Potential of Online Social Networks

- What Is Social Networking
- Platforms and Tools for Developing Online Social Networks
- Enriching Networks with Value-Added Features and Competitive Differentiators
- Features of an Effective Social Network
- Analyzing Your Social Network
- Application of Social Networks
- Understanding the Basics
- The Dark Side of Social Networks
- The Future of Social Networks
- Emerging Trends and Opportunities
- Social Networking and the Business
- IT Opportunities in Social Networks

Chapter 2. Can User-Generated Online Content Sell Your Product?

- Eric K. Clemons
- Rob Austin
- Tom DeMarco
- Ron Blitstein
- Lou Mazzucchelli
- Lynne Ellyn
- Tim Lister
- Christine Davis
- Ken Orr

Chapter 3. How Social Computing Is Redefining Content

- Documents
- Memes
- The Web as a Platform

Chapter 4. Mining Blogs for Business Benefits

- The Social Connection in Blogs
- Some Benefits of Corporate Blogging
- A Suggestive Approach for Blog Mining
- Vendor Scan

Source(s)

[http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reportinfo.asp?report_id=660386&t=d&cat_id=]

[http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reportinfo.asp?report_id=660386&t=t&cat_id=]

Prices

Electronic: EURO €261.00

Hard Copy: €261.00 + € 50.00 Shipping/Handling

Brochure/Order Form

[http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/660386/harnessing_the_power_and_potential_of_social.pdf]

Network Citizens: Power And Responsibility At Work

2008-10-30T19:43:00.006-05:00

Network Citizens: Power And Responsibility At Work
Humans are social animals, spinning intricate webs of relationships with friends, colleagues, neighbours and enemies. These networks have always been with us, but the advance of networking technologies, changes to our interconnected economy and an altering job market have super-charged the power of networking, catapulting it to the heart of organisational thinking.

Social networks are providing tremendous opportunities for people to collaborate. But until now, thinking has focused only on how organisations can respond to and capitalise on networks. This report argues that we have to look equally at how networks use organisations for their own ends. That is where the new contours of inequality and power lie that will shape the network world. We have to face networks’ dark side, as well as their very real potential.

Bringing together in-depth case studies of six organisations, Network Citizens maps the key fault-lines that people and organisations will have to address in the future world of work. Not doing so puts at risk the very qualities we had invested in them: openness, innovation, collaboration and meritocracy. Since networks can act for good or ill, incubating the talents and ideas of the many, or promoting the interests of the few, the need for a new set of responsibilities is growing. If we are network members, we must be network citizens, too.

[http://www.demos.co.uk/publications//networkcitizens]

Full Text Available At

[http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Network%20citizens%20-%20web.pdf]

News Coverage

BBC: Bosses 'Should Embrace Facebook'

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7695716.stm]

ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology 2008 / Use of Social Networking Sites

2008-10-23T13:31:00.016-05:00

The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008 (ID: ERS0808)

Gail Salaway (EDUCAUSE) and Judith Borreson Caruso (University of Wisconsin-Madison) /With: Mark R. Nelson (NACS)

Introduction by: Nicole Ellison (Michigan State University)

CMS, Net Generation Learner, Social Computing, social networks, Student IT Competencies, Students

Documents Contributed by ECAR, Research Studies (10/21/2008)

Abstract: This 2008 ECAR research study is a longitudinal extension of the 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007 ECAR studies of students and information technology. The study is based on quantitative data from a spring 2008 survey of 27,317 freshmen and seniors at 90 four-year institutions and eight two-year institutions; student focus groups that included input from 75 students at four institutions; and analysis of qualitative data from 5,877 written responses to open-ended questions. In addition to studying student ownership, experience, behaviors, preferences, and skills with respect to information technologies, the 2008 study also includes

A Special Focus on Student Participation in Social Networking Sites [CHAPTER 6]

Citation for this work: Salaway, Gail and Caruso, Judith B., with Mark R. Nelson. The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2008 (Research Study, Vol. 8). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008)

Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1 / Executive Summary

Chapter 2 / Introduction: Reshaping Campus Communication and Community through Social Network Sites

Chapter 3 / Methodology and Respondent Characteristics

Chapter 4 / Ownership of, Use of, and Skill with IT

Chapter 5 / IT and the Academic Experience

Chapter 6 / SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

Appendix A / Acknowledgments

Appendix B / Students and Information Technology in Higher Education: 2008 Survey Questionnaire

Appendix C /Qualitative Interview Questions

Appendix D / Participating Institutions and Survey Response Rates

Appendix E / Bibliography

Key Findings
[http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EKF/EKF0808.pdf]

Roadmap
[http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ECM/ECM0808.pdf]

Survey Instrument
[http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/si/ESI08a.pdf]

Full-Text
HTML/PDF [http://www.educause.edu/ers0808/135156]

PDF [http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERS0808/RS/ERS0808w.pdf]

Source
[http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ECAR/TheECARStudyofUndergradua/47485]

Inmagic® Presto: A Social Knowledge Management Platform

2008-09-17T17:03:00.033-05:00

Inmagic® Presto is a social knowledge management platform designed to improve productivity and effectiveness within information-dependent communities by leveraging their information and human assets.

Inmagic® Presto represents a fundamentally new approach to information and knowledge management by tightly integrating, into a single environment, a knowledge repository, information search, access and discovery tools and the “wisdom of the community.” Presto’s unique approach yields an ideal application platform for integrating “topdown” vetted information with “bottom-up” social knowledge to address an organization’s most critical initiatives that span functional groups.

Presto addresses initiatives such as:

Socializing and expanding libraries and collections
Competitive intelligence
Consumer insights
New product development and innovations
Environmental monitoring
Public and medical affairs management
Influence marketing
Intellectual property management and knowledge preservation

New Generation Knowledge Management

Recent advances in social media technologies have spawned new perspectives and approaches to information and special library management and a new generation of knowledge management. The foundation of this new generation knowledge management is the social knowledge network that combines important internal content with timely external data in a shared framework where communities can be created and the impact of the information enhanced. In this environment, organizations can achieve their information objective — making richer, more vibrant, responsive and high impact knowledge communities.

Platform for Enabling Social Knowledge Networks

With Inmagic Presto, our social knowledge management platform, information-dependent communities improve their productivity and effectiveness. Presto delivers this fundamentally new approach to information and knowledge management by tightly integrating, into a single environment, a knowledge repository, advanced information access and discovery tools, and the “wisdom of the community.”

Inmagic Presto enables the creation of social knowledge networks through a unique integration of content management, information management, and social management capabilities. Presto allows you to harness the power of the connected universe using new generation knowledge management. Presto’s unique approach yields an ideal application platform for integrating “top down” vetted information with “bottom-up” social knowledge to address an organization’s most critical initiatives that span functional groups.

The Industry's First True Social Library

The knowledge publishing and discovery capabilities of Inmagic Presto have been combined with rich library management capabilities to create Inmagic® Presto Social Library. Based on the advanced library asset management and workflow capabilities of Inmagic’s Genie technology and a social knowledge network platform, the Inmagic Presto Social Library enables organizations to fully leverage their knowledge assets, making them available for easy access, discovery and “socialization.” This seamless integration is the industry’s first true social library and creates a framework to expand the reach and content of your library.

[snip]

Inmagic® Presto is available on a subscription license basis which means you are only buying what you need and your total cost of ownership is lower. In addition, Inmagic offers hosted SaaS delivery for customers whose knowledge management solution requires outsourcing. Our managed hosting services provide the stable yet flexible foundation needed for growing your social knowledge network.

Source

[http://www.inmagic.com/products/research/presto.html]

Brochure

[http://www.inmagic.com/products/research/Presto_ds.pdf]

White Paper: New Generation Knowledge Management: Social Knowledge Networks (Registration Required)

[http://www.inmagic.com/news/press_room/white_papers/SKN_list.html]

Webinar / October 7 2008 / 11:00 am PDT; 2:00 pm EDT (Pre-Registration Required)

[http://www.kmworld.com/webinars/register.aspx?EventID=104]

Archive of Webinar NOW Available (10-7-08) for 90 Days (01-09) [64 Minutes]

[http://www.kmworld.com/Webinars/104-New-Generation-Knowledge-Management-Social-Knowledge-Networks.htm]

Primary Discussion Document: Collaboration and Social Media - 2008

by Geoffrey Bock & Steve Paxhia
June 2008 / 132 pages

Collaboration and Social Media 2008 shows how social media, based on "Web 2.0" technologies, is approaching the tipping-point. First generation tools now in widespread use, such as text-oriented email, web sites, and shared workspaces, are soon to be supplemented by social media applications that incorporate blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, rich media, and other innovative technologies. The Gilbane research report predicts the transition from horizontal applications to vertical solutions, and offers a number of strategies to help companies with the transition.

Free After Required Registration

[http://gilbane.com/Research-Reports.html]

Presto Version 2.2 Now Available

[http://www.inmagic.com/products/research/presto-v22details.html]

Blog

[http://inmagicinc.blogspot.com/]

LASSIE Case Study 5: Libraries and Facebook

2008-09-03T18:52:00.011-05:00

LASSIE: Libraries and Social Software in Education

Case Study 5: Libraries and Facebook

Jane Secker /London School of Economics and Political Science

January 2008

Funded by: University of London Centre for Distance Education Teaching and Research Awards

This case study explores the use of the social networking site Facebook (www.facebook.com) as a tool for libraries and librarians. The case study was launched some way into the project following the growth and popularity of this social networking site. Many librarians have now joined Facebook for
purely social reasons, however it can overlap into the professional world as it is being used by several professional library groups and for promoting library related events. Facebook also has a number of library related tools which the project team felt were worthy of further exploration.

This case study is slightly different to the four other case studies, because we did not set up a specific library-related initiative in Facebook for use with librarians or distance learners. The case study is largely based on the literature and our own experiences of using Facebook. The reasons for this approach were twofold: partly because the use of Facebook accelerated phenomenally during the period when we were undertaking our research (March 2007 – January 2008). Early on in the project and at the time of planning the case studies we could not have anticipated the level of interest that developed in this social networking site. This was specifically a UK-based phenomena and largely driven by the extensive coverage that the site received in the mainstream media during the summer of 2007. It also did not seem appropriate to set up a project-related initiative in Facebook for real distance learners as we felt this should ideally be undertaken and maintained by a Library. We therefore have tried to document the experiences of libraries and librarians who have used Facebook and drawn on our own personal experiences of using the site.

[http://clt.lse.ac.uk/Projects/Case_Study_Five_report.pdf]

"I'm Ready For My Close Up ...": Facebook - The Movie

2008-08-28T19:43:00.008-05:00

'West Wing' creator may be writing movie about Facebook

August 28, 2008 (Computerworld) A new Facebook profile created for Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin claims that he has agreed to write a movie about the invention of Facebook Inc.'s popular social network.

"I understand there are a few other people using Facebook pages under my name -- which I find more flattering than creepy -- but this is me," the profile notes. "I don't know how I can prove that, but feel free to test me."

The profile says that Sorkin, who created the West Wing television series, has agreed to write the movie for Sony Pictures and producer Scot Rudin. Sorkin also admits on his profile that he doesn't yet know how Facebook works.

"I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I've started this page," the page says. "Actually, it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do, and she's been dead for 33 years."

Sorkin goes on to urge Facebook users to send him questions and leave comments, which many have done. Sorkin has written two Broadway plays and several feature films, including A Few Good Men, Malice and Charlie Wilson's War.

[snip]

"Aaron Sorkin prompts users to test to see if he is real in the group's description," he noted. "The only problem with accomplishing what would otherwise be an elementary task is that there is no way to 'friend' or send a message to Sorkin. The only other person that I know of that doesn't have a friend request in the directory is [Facebook founder and CEO] Mark Zuckerberg

[http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9113756&intsrc=news_ts_head]

Ryze: Business Networking

2008-08-26T20:25:00.010-05:00

Ryze [http://www.ryze.com/] helps people make connections and grow their networks. You can network to grow your business, build your career and life, find a job and make sales. Or just keep in touch with friends.

Members get a free networking-oriented home page and can send messages to other members. They can also join special Networks related to their industry, interests or location. More than 1,000 organizations host Networks on Ryze to help their members interact with each other and grow their organizations.
Is this free? Yes. You can message other members, join networks, view member home pages and much more for free. We also have a paid service that lets you do other things like advanced searches for a few dollars per month, but you can do a lot for free.

Why is it called Ryze? Because it's about people helping each other 'rise up' through quality networking.

Where are Ryze members located? Ryze members are around the world, with more than 500,000 members in more than 200 countries. When you join, we give you links to several people in your country or state to check out.

Who are the people behind Ryze? Adrian Scott is Ryze's founder. Previously he was a founding investor in Napster, co-founded a startup called Applesoup/Flycode, and developed technology for companies like Charles Schwab and Bank of America.

How did you come up with the idea for Ryze? Our founder, Adrian, used to hold networking events in his loft back in San Francisco. He wanted a way for people to keep in touch outside of the events and as people moved around the world. He also wanted to make an easy way for people to remember their friends' backgrounds. (How often can you remember what companies a friend used to work for and where they went to school?) He also wanted to create a way for people to build their networks across geography.

How do you make money? Though our basic membership level is free, we offer paid subscriptions for advanced features like contacting distantly-connected members for a few dollars a month. It's a decent investment for people building their career or business. We also have some revenue from events we hold, and advertising.

Can my organization use Ryze to help its members network? Yes, your organization can set up a Network on Ryze to help your members connect with each other, and also help you recruit new members and publicize your events.

[http://www.ryze.com/faq.php]

FAQ

[http://ryze.helpserve.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=view]

Video Tutorial

Windows Media (10MB)

[http://www.ryze.com/video/tutorialsignup.wmv]

Real Player (7MB)

[http://www.ryze.com/video/tutorialsignup.rm]

Amazon.com to Buy Shelfari, A Social Network for Book Lovers

2008-08-26T18:50:00.001-05:00

Amazon.com to Buy Social Network for Book Lovers
By HEATHER HAVENSTEIN / Computerworld, IDG

Amazon.com Monday agreed to acquire Shelfari, a social network for book lovers, for an undisclosed sum.

Amazon's acquisition of Shelfari means the site will likely make it a much stronger competitor to other social networks that focus on bibliophiles, according to some observers. In addition, Amazon earlier this month acquired online rare book seller AbeBooks, and gained its 40% stake in one of Shelfari's main competitors, LibraryThing. Thus, observers note, Amazon will have a stake in two competing social networks for readers.

Shelfari allows users to build a virtual book shelf to display the books they have read or want to read, along with the ability to provide reviews and ratings for viewing by others. The site also helps users connect with each other to form groups or provide book suggestions.

Josh Hug, Shelfari's CEO, noted in a blog post Monday that the site will benefit from Amazon's additional resources and expertise in building a platform where users can share ideas. [snip]

[snip]

"Whether Shelfari goes mainstream will depend on how Amazon integrates it with its core business and with products such as the e-Reader Kindle," he noted. He went on to note that LibraryThing hopes to compete with Shelfari by providing a superior service to Shelfari. " [snip]

Stan Schroeder, a blogger at Mashable, added that Amazon turned its eye to Shelfari because it needed a book-oriented social network and acquiring Shelfari was the "easiest, fastest or least cash intensive" way to do it.

"I think that Amazon will actually help Shelfari to grow." Schroeder added. "It'll be much easier to build a community for book-lovers if you've got Amazon's huge user numbers and book inventory to help you."

[snip]

[http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C400693880002574B10059EF02.html]

Comparing Social Networking to Online Communities

2008-08-25T20:14:00.007-05:00

Comparing Social Networking to Online Communities

By leelefever on December 7, 2004 - 9:08am.

Lately I've been promoting the possibilities of using social networking to bring managers together within an enterprise. Recently, after introducing the concept, a teammate said: This is just another virtual team/community collaboration tool we;ve seen a lot of those and they never work.

While my introduction to the concept surely played a part in this perception, I couldn't help but wonder about the real differences. What are the significant differences between social networking and more traditional online communities? How would I describe the differences?

In my mind, they are different. Social networking represents a related but significantly different animal than more traditional online community / collaboration tools. Before going forward in comparing the two, let me be more specific: I mean 'social networking' to mean sites /communities like Orkut, Tribe, Ryze, etc. I mean 'traditional online communities' to mean discussion or message board-based communities ... .

Following are the points that I believe make the biggest differences:

Use of the Member Profile
Identity without Collaboration
Explicit Relationships with Forums and People
New Forum/Group Creation

Network Centric Navigation

[http://commoncraft.com/archives/000834.html]

Client Video: LinkedIn

2008-08-25T20:02:00.006-05:00

Client Video: LinkedIn
By leelefever on July 2, 2008 - 8:49am
Length: 02:29
Date Produced: Jul 2 2008
Views: 6894 reads

Notes: I've been a member of LinkedIn for years and like many members, I wondered how to get more from my connections. The company came to us to help address this question in video form. Ultimately, it's about uncovering LinkedIn's ability to not just connect, but get things done.

[http://commoncraft.com/linkedin]

Do Social Networks Bring the End of Privacy?

2008-08-25T10:39:00.013-05:00

Scientific American Magazine - August 18, 2008
Do Social Networks Bring the End of Privacy?
Young people share the most intimate details of personal life on social-networking Web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, portending a realignment of the public and the private

By Daniel J. Solove

He has a name, but most people just know him as “the Star Wars Kid.” In fact, he is known around the world by tens of millions of people. Unfortunately, his notoriety is for one of the most embarrassing moments in his life.

[snip]

For the first time in history nearly anybody can disseminate information around the world. People do not need to be famous enough to be interviewed by the mainstream media. With the Internet, anybody can reach a global audience.

Technology has led to a generational divide. On one side are high school and college students whose lives virtually revolve around social-networking sites and blogs. On the other side are their parents, for whom recollection of the past often remains locked in fading memories or, at best, in books, photographs and videos. For the current generation, the past is preserved on the Internet, potentially forever. And this change raises the question of how much privacy people can expect—or even desire—in an age of ubiquitous networking.

Generation Google

The number of young people using social-networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace is staggering. At most college campuses, more than 90 percent of students maintain their own sites. I call the people growing up today “Generation Google.” For them, many fragments of personal information will reside on the Internet forever, accessible to this and future generations through a simple Google search.

That openness is both good and bad. People can now spread their ideas everywhere without reliance on publishers, broadcasters or other traditional gatekeepers. But that transformation also creates profound threats to privacy and reputations. [snip]

Before the Internet, gossip would spread by word of mouth and remain within the boundaries of that social circle. Private details would be confined to diaries and kept locked in a desk drawer. Social networking spawned by the Internet allows communities worldwide to revert to the close-knit culture of preindustrial society, in which nearly every member of a tribe or a farming hamlet knew everything about the neighbors. Except that now the “villagers” span the globe.

[snip]

Social-networking sites and blogs are not the only threat to privacy. As several articles in this issue of Scientific American have already made clear, companies collect and use our personal information at every turn. [snip]

The government also compromises privacy by assembling vast databases that can be searched for suspicious patterns of behavior. [snip]

The Future of Reputation

Broad-based exposure of personal information diminishes the ability to protect reputation by shaping the image that is presented to others. Reputation plays an important role in society, and preserving private details of one’s life is essential to it. [snip]

Some would argue that the decline of privacy might allow people to be less inhibited and more honest. But when everybody’s transgressions are exposed, people may not judge one another less harshly. Having your personal information may fail to improve my judgment of you. It may, in fact, increase the likelihood that I will hastily condemn you. Moreover, the loss of privacy might inhibit freedom. Elevated visibility that comes with living in a transparent online world means you may never overcome past mistakes.

[snip]

This openness means that the opportunities for members of Generation Google might be limited because of something they did years ago as wild teenagers. Their intimate secrets may be revealed by other people they know. Or they might become the unwitting victim of a false rumor. Like it or not, many people are beginning to get used to having a lot more of their personal information online.

What Is to Be Done?

Can we prevent a future in which so much information about people’s private lives circulates beyond their control? Some technologists and legal scholars flatly say no. Privacy, they maintain, is just not compatible with a world in which information flows so freely. As Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems once famously declared: “You already have zero privacy. Get over it.” Countless books and articles have heralded the “end,” “death” and “destruction” of privacy.

Those proclamations are wrongheaded at best. It is still possible to protect privacy, but doing so requires that we rethink outdated understandings of the concept. One such view holds that privacy requires total secrecy: once information is revealed to others, it is no longer private. This notion of privacy is unsuited to an online world. The generation of people growing up today understands privacy in a more nuanced way. They know that personal information is routinely shared with countless others, and they also know that they leave a trail of data wherever they go.

The more subtle understanding of privacy embraced by Generation Google recognizes that a person should retain some control over personal information that becomes publicly available. This generation wants a say in how private details of their lives are disseminated.

[snip]

Facebook rolled out these programs without adequately informing its users. People unwittingly found themselves shilling products on their friends’ Web sites. And some people were shocked to see their private purchases on other Web sites suddenly displayed to the public as part of their profiles that appeared on the Facebook site.

The outcry and an ensuing online petition called for Facebook to reform its practices—a document that quickly attracted tens of thousands of signatures and that ultimately led to several changes. As witnessed in these instances, privacy does not always involve sharing of secrets. Facebook users did not want their identities used to endorse products with Social Ads. [snip]

Changing the Law

Canada and most European countries have more stringent privacy statutes than the U.S., which has resisted enacting all-encompassing legislation. Privacy laws elsewhere recognize that revealing information to others does not extinguish one’s right to privacy. Increasing accessibility of personal information, however, means that U.S. law also should begin recognizing the need to safeguard a degree of privacy in the public realm.

In some areas, U.S. law has a well-developed system of controlling information. Copyright recognizes strong rights for public information, protecting a wide range of works, from movies to software.

[snip] To cope with increased threats to privacy, the scope of the appropriation tort should be expanded. The broadening might actually embody the original early 20th-century interpretation of this principle of common law, which conceived of privacy as more than a means to protect property ... .

Any widening of the scope of the appropriation tort must be balanced against the competing need to allow legitimate news gathering and dissemination of public information. The tort should probably apply only when photographs and other personal information are used in ways that are not of public concern—a criterion that will inevitably be subject to ongoing judicial deliberation.

Appropriation is not the only common-law privacy tort that needs an overhaul to become more relevant in an era of networked digital communications. We already have many legal tools to protect privacy, but they are currently crippled by conceptions of privacy that prevent them from working effectively. [snip]

It would be best if these disputes could be resolved without recourse to the courts, but the broad reach of electronic networking will probably necessitate changes in common law. The threats to privacy are formidable, and people are starting to realize how strongly they regard privacy as a basic right. Toward this goal, society must develop a new and more nuanced understanding of public and private life—one that acknowledges that more personal information is going to be available yet also protects some choice over how that information is shared and distributed.

[http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=do-social-networks-bring]

Inigral Schools: Will Colleges Friend Facebook?

2008-08-24T17:24:00.020-05:00

Will Colleges Friend Facebook?

As colleges have worked over the years to solidify their Web 2.0 presence and reach out to students where they’re most likely to congregate online, there’s often a glaring omission from their overall Internet strategies: social networks. That’s not so much an oversight as a hesitation, with many institutions still debating whether to adopt social networking capabilities of their own or grit their teeth and take the plunge into Facebook, with all the messiness and potential privacy concerns that would imply.

A new start-up company [Inigral: The Social Web for Education [http://inigral.com/] believes colleges’ wariness about joining the Facebook fray — despite the advantages they could theoretically reap from keeping tabs on alumni, soliciting donations and marketing to would-be applicants — leaves an opening in the market for an application that would combine the ubiquity of the social networking site with the privacy and authentication sought by institutions.

The result, Schools [http://inigral.com/schools/] [QuickTime Overview] , upends the traditional application framework. Rather than make it available to anyone with a Facebook account, the service is based on partnerships with individual colleges that pay to allow their students access. The colleges then provide the company, Inigral, with constantly updated data feeds that allow the application to stay current with courses, clubs and other activities that students can join.

The application eases colleges’ privacy worries by adding an extra layer of authentication, usually using official student IDs or e-mail addresses, and adhering to any federal privacy restrictions.

[snip]

Inigral initially began its foray into educational social networking by developing a Courses [http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2791815712] application, which it has mainly shelved to focus on Schools.

Beyond the basic functionality of allowing students to display to their classmates what courses they’re taking, they can join dorms or student groups — synced with colleges’ official data — and say which sports teams they play on. They can decide who can see what (for example, only true Facebook friends can see many details), including comments on how they’re doing in various classes, but stay assured that all classmates within the application have been verified as real.

In contrast to other applications that try to bring college classroom functionality to the social network, said Michael Staton, Inigral’s co-founder and a former high school teacher, Schools builds on the original campus success of Facebook, which replicated students’ real-life relationships. [snip]

“We think there is a lot of value, and universities are starting to realize this, in having students feel more connected to each other and to campus life,” Staton said. Rather than compete with course management systems, some of which are also migrating onto Facebook or inspiring independently designed applications, Inigral is attempting to encompass the college experience as a whole.

[snip]

“It’s something that we’ve been looking at for a long time,” said Kevin Christian, the university’s director of strategic partnerships, of Facebook. “The higher ed community broadly has been trying to understand how best to utilize social networking as a tool to affect [our] campuses in a positive way."

The university, he said, is finding it can have the benefits of “living within the Facebook world” without ignoring “prudent concern to retain Facebook as a true social networking site.” Much as the university is planning to do with its new army of iPhones, Christian said some faculty members were planning on making use of the newly adopted technology in their classrooms.

[snip]

Next spring, the company plans on rolling out a “bigger beta” of its application, Staton said, before doing a major launch in fall 2009. Beyond a core set of “really, really affordable” features, the company is planning on adding on extra functionality at a premium cost.

[snip]

Campuses might ask, “’How much time and resources is this going take from us?’ Our answer is, none,” Staton said. — Andy Guess

[http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/08/19/facebook]

Facebook: Changing The Way Faculty And Students Interact

2008-08-24T16:34:00.011-05:00

Facebook: Changing The Way Faculty And Students Interact

The vast majority of undergraduate students and many graduate students at the University of Maryland have accounts on the social networking site Facebook. The site provides support for maintaining social connections, even very casual ones, and for browsing friends of friends. It also has the capability to support community groups with discussion boards, shared links, videos and photos, and a public comment space.

All of these features can be useful tools for supporting classes at the university. Facebook is not affiliated with the university; this allows it to be a forum for students to have more casual social interactions in a virtual space just like they can have causal social interactions outside of the classroom that support learning.

Dr. [Jen] Golbeck uses Facebook for all of her classes. She created a group for her class and requires all the students to join it. This creates a place where students can see basic information about one another; for example, a Facebook group shows the photo and name of all its members There are several benefits to this, starting with the very simple.

For faculty, this allows us to learn names and faces more quickly. In larger undergraduate classes, this is a very useful tool. For students who have made details of their profile available, we can also find information about their major and their interests. Dr. Golbeck has found this to be really helpful when students ask for advice on finding ideas for class projects; a better understanding their background allows faculty to suggest topics that they will be passionate about.

Dr. Golbeck has also found that about a quarter of her class adds her to their friend list in their profile. While that does not provide direct benefits for the class, it maintains a relationship between faculty and the students once the class ends. That, in turn, allows information communication through the Facebook interface. This type of communication feels less intrusive to social network users than email or a phone call, and thus students are more likely to contact faculty this way. After class ends, this has been useful when students want advice on other classes, or if they are asking for recommendation letters for internships or jobs. Facebook maintains the social context for my relationship with the student, so that is made apparent with their message instead of requiring a long reminder from a student who I may have taught a couple years ago.

For students, this low barrier to communication is also useful. Since Facebook is not associated with the university, student might feel more comfortable engaging in open discussion there than on blackboard or other official websites. Facebook also facilitates contact between students. For example, when building groups for a project, students may have had discussions with one another, but not have each others email addresses (and sometimes may not even know each others' names). Since Facebook provides a list of students through the class group, students can find one another here and communicate directly through Facebook.

It is important to keep in mind that since Facebook is unofficial, it is not a space faculty can or should police. The freedom students have there to connect with faculty and other students in an informal way is precisely why it can be a successful communication tool. When properly understood and used as it’s intended, Facebook can be an excellent virtual medium for building and maintaining real world social connections within a class.

[http://ischool.umd.edu/provost/golbeck.shtml]

Online Social Networking: An Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation

2008-08-24T11:29:00.014-05:00

Online Social Networking: An Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation / Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. / Executive Director – Virtual Private Library

Online social networks are becoming a true growth point of the Internet. As individuals constantly desire to interact with each other both in business and in personal contacts, the ability for the Internet to deliver this networking capability grows stronger and stronger. There are a number of excellent resources available to anyone interested in becoming part of the online social networking community of the Internet. I have listed and briefly annotated a number of resources and sites that will start you on your knowledge discovery for online social networking on the Internet.

This Internet MiniGuide on Online Social Networking is a freely available download at the below Subject Tracer™ Information Blog and is frequently updated. Also available as a free download is the white paper link compilation

[http://www.SocialInformatics.net/]

[http://whitepapers.virtualprivatelibrary.net/Online%20Social%20Networks.pdf]

Related

“Z as in Zillman,” Library Hi Tech News 21, no. 9 (November 2004): 25-30. Self-archived at <http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/Zillman.pdf>

Social Networking: A Quantitative And Qualitative Research Report Into Attitudes, Behaviours And Use

2008-08-22T17:46:00.023-05:00

Are You An 'Alpha Socialiser'' or an 'Attention Seeker'? ... Ofcom Research Identifies Social Networking Profiles

Nearly half of all children who have access to the internet have their own personal profile on a social networking site, according to extensive qualitative and quantitative Ofcom research published today [April 02 2008].

The report reveals just how quickly social networking sites have become a part of Britons' lives. As well as widespread use amongst 8-17 year olds (49 per cent of internet users in that age group), the report also reveals that over a fifth (22 per cent) of adult internet users aged 16+ have their own online profile. The research finds that it is common for adults to have a profile on more than one site (the average being 1.6) and half of current adult social networkers say that they access their profiles at least every other day.

The research also shows how social networking sites are stretching the traditional meaning of 'friends'. Some users say that they derive enjoyment from 'collecting' lists of people with whom they have an online connection but often have never met.

Types of social networkers

The qualitative research suggests five distinct groups of people who use social networking sites :

Alpha Socialisers – mostly male, under 25s, who use sites in intense short bursts to flirt, meet new people and be entertained
Attention Seekers – mostly female, who crave attention and comments from others, often by posting photos and customising their profiles
Followers – males and females of all ages who join sites to keep up with what their peers are doing
Faithfuls – older males and females generally aged over 20, who typically use social networking sites to rekindle old friendships, often from school or university
Functionals – mostly older males who tend to be single-minded in using sites for a particular purpose.

The qualitative research also suggests three distinct groups of people who do not use social networking sites

Concerned about safety – often older people and parents concerned about safety online, in particular making personal details available online
Technically inexperienced – often people over 30 years old who lack confidence in using the internet and computers
Intellectual rejecters – often older teens and young adults who have no interest in social networking sites and see them as a waste of time

Privacy and safety

Despite being one of the main reasons cited by some respondents for not using social networking sites, privacy and safety are not a top of mind concern for those who use social networking sites. The research found that:

41 per cent of children and 44 per cent of adults leave their privacy settings as default 'open' which means that their profiles are visible to anyone
34 per cent of 16-24 year olds are willing to give out sensitive personal information such as their phone number or email address (Get Safe Online Research), and
17 per cent of adult users said that they talked to people on social networking sites that they didn't know and 35 per cent spoke to people who were 'friends of friends'.

The research also found that some 27 per cent of 8-11 year olds who are aware of social networking sites and have internet access have an online profile. While s ome of these are on sites intended for younger children, the presence of underage users on social networking sites intended for those aged 13 or over was confirmed by the research. In addition, while 65 per cent of parents claim to set rules on their child's use of social networking sites, only 53 per cent of children said that their parents set such rules.

Other key findings

Facebook is the most popular site with adults followed by MySpace and then Bebo. For children aged between 8 and 17, Bebo was the most used social networking site
A minority of younger women reported creating fake profiles for fun;
Some teenagers and adults in their early twenties reported feeling 'addicted' to social networking sites and were aware that their use was squeezing their study time, and
A minority of people reported being aware of bullying through social networking sites and some younger users admitted using social networking sites to 'get back' at people they had fallen out with.

[http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/news/2008/04/nr_20080402]

Executive Summary

[http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/socialnetworking/summary/]

Slide Show

[http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/slides/socialnetworking/slide1.html]

Full Report

[http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/socialnetworking/report.pdf]

Annex 3: Social Networking Qualitative research

[http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/socialnetworking/annex3.pdf]

Video: Ofcom's Research on Social Networking

[http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/socialnetworking/video/]

Source

[http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/socialnetworking/]

Emergency Alerts Via Facebook And MySpace Are New Ways To Reach Students

2008-08-22T16:17:00.022-05:00

Emergency Alerts via Facebook and MySpace Are New Ways to Reach Students / By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Chronicle of Higher Education / Friday, August 22, 2008

Colleges are experimenting with Facebook and other social networks to notify students about emergencies like crimes and floods—and get vital information in return. Most emergency-alert systems send out warnings. But social networks give students a chance to add on-the-scene reports or trade information if trouble hits. In addition to cell-phone and e-mail alerts, the social networks also give colleges yet another way to reach students in a crisis.

The prospect has some safety officials excited by the possibilities of letting students trade crisis information over Facebook and MySpace, but others worried that it could open an alert system up to misleading rumors.

The University of Maryland at College Park set up a Facebook group last month for "emergency awareness" at the university. Any emergency message that the university issues on its other alert systems, which can go to cell phones, university Web pages, and e-mail accounts, will also be posted to the Facebook group. The group also lists tips about emergency preparedness, photographs of drills by emergency staff, and other information.

"Students aren't using traditional methods of getting information from authorities," said Maj. Jay Gruber, of the university's police department. "So I wanted to think outside the box and think of ways that students do get information."

[snip]

A group of researchers at the university is also working to build a prototype of a homemade social network for the university's Web site designed for use in emergency situations. The project is an outgrowth of work by Ben Shneiderman, a professor of computer science at the university, and Jennifer J. Preece, dean of the university's College of Information Studies. They published an article in Science last year proposing that local governments develop social networks to supplement 911 emergency hotlines.

[snip]

Now a graduate student at Maryland, Philip Fei Wu, is building a prototype for university use. "We hope to create a platform to allow students to communicate, to exchange ideas, to comment on ideas" in an emergency, Mr. Wu said in an interview.

[snip]

Officials at the University of California at Los Angeles have been working with MySpace to build a system that will automatically post emergency alerts to a university MySpace page. [snip]

The project was proposed and led by a Sara Cohen, who worked as an intern in Mr. Burns's office while she was a graduate student at UCLA. Ms. Cohen lived in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and found MySpace and Facebook to be the best sources of information then because cell-phone networks and other communication systems suffered outages, and she thought the university could proactively use social networks in future disasters.

Mr. Burns said the university hopes to share the computer code it has developed with other colleges. [snip]

At least a few other colleges—including Florida State University and the University of Iowa—are also exploring creating MySpace or Facebook pages for use in emergency alerts.

[http://chronicle.com/free/2008/08/4317n.htm]

LibGuides Integration With Twitter

2008-08-22T11:32:00.018-05:00

LibGuides Integration With Twitter

Springshare has announced the integration of its LibGuide service

[http://www.springshare.com/libguides/] with Twitter, the free social networking and micro-blogging service [http://twitter.com] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter]

"Now when you publish a new guide you can broadcast the news on Twitter for all your faithful followers to see. Anybody subscribed to your Twitter updates will see the name of your newly published guide and the URL to access it. It’s a great way to advertise your guides to the Twitter universe ... ."

"The 'Post to Twitter' option is available when one changes the status of a guide to “published”. [http://support.springshare.com/2008/08/libguides-twitter/ ]

When Professors Create Social Networks for Classes ...

2008-08-20T20:12:00.007-05:00

August 18, 2008
When Professors Create Social Networks for Classes, Some Students See a 'Creepy Treehouse'

A growing number of professors are experimenting with Facebook, Twitter, and other social-networking tools for their courses, but some students greet an invitation to join professors’ personal networks with horror, seeing faculty members as intruders in their private online spaces. Recognizing that, some professors have coined the term “creepy treehouse” to describe technological innovations by faculty members that make students’ skin crawl.

Jared Stein, director of instructional-design services at Utah Valley University, offered a clear definition of the term on his blog earlier this year. “Though such systems may be seen as innovative or problem-solving to the institution, they may repulse some users who see them as infringement on the sanctity of their peer groups, or as having the potential for institutional violations of their privacy, liberty, ownership, or creativity,” Mr. Stein wrote.

Alec Couros, an assistant professor of education at the University of Regina, in Canada, is coordinator of the education school’s information and communication technologies program. He says that there are productive — and non-creepy — ways for professors to use social-networking technologies, but that the best approach is to create online forums that students want to join, rather than forcing participation. “There’s a middle space I think you can find with students,” he says. —Jeffrey R. Young

Many Comments

[http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3251/when-professors-create-social-networks-for-classes-some-students-see-a-creepy-treehouse]

SPEC Kit 304: Social Software in Libraries

2008-08-20T15:26:00.005-05:00

Social Software in Libraries: SPEC Kit 304 Published by ARL

Matthew Bejune and Jana Ronan / July 2008 / ISBN 1-59407-803-3 / 196 pp. / $45 ($35 ARL members)

Washington DC—The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Social Software in Libraries, SPEC Kit 304, which provides an overview of ARL libraries’ implementation of software that people use to connect with one another online.

In the last few years, the use of social software has grown enormously. MySpace.com attracted more than 114 million visitors in June 2007, a 72% increase from June 2006, while Facebook grew 270%, to 52.2 million visitors, according to comScore. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports 48% of adults have visited video-sharing sites such as YouTube. Many authors who write about online social software emphasize the community of such sites, where users mingle for social, political, or research purposes, creating and sharing information or just having fun. These sites “allow individuals to present themselves, articulate their social networks, and establish or maintain connections with others.”

While a growing number of libraries have adopted social software as a way to further interact with library patrons and library staff, many things are unclear about the use of social software in ARL member libraries. This SPEC survey was designed to discover how many libraries and library staff are using social software and for what purposes, how those activities are organized and managed, and the benefits and challenges of using social software, among other questions.

This survey was distributed to the 123 ARL member libraries in February 2008. Sixty-four libraries completed the survey by the March 14 deadline for a response rate of 52%. All but three of the responding libraries report that their library staff uses social software (95%) and one of those three plans to begin using social software in the future.

Survey results indicate that the most broadly adopted social software—chat or instant messaging—was also the earliest implemented social software. While one respondent was using instant messaging for reference and another was using chat for internal communication as early as 1998, the earliest use of this type of social software dates back to 1993.

While chat and instant messaging have been in use for several years, use of other types of social software in libraries is very recent. Beyond isolated cases, a steadily increasing number of ARL member libraries began implementing social software in 2005, with the largest rate of adoption being in 2007.

This SPEC Kit includes documentation from respondents of examples of Web sites that show how each of the 10 types of social software is used.

[http://www.arl.org/news/pr/spec304-19aug08.shtml]

Table of Contents and Executive Summary and Representative Documents

REPRESENTATIVE DOCUMENTS: Social Networking

University at Buffalo, SUNY ; Facebook: University at Buffalo Libraries / 116

University of California, Irvine ; ’Facebook: UCI Libraries / 117

University of Georgia ; Facebook: UGA Student Learning Center / 118

Indiana University Bloomington; Facebook: Herman B. Wells / 119

University of Manitoba ; Virtual Learning Commons / 120

University of Michigan ; Facebook: Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library / 121

Southern Illinois University Carbondale ; MySpace: Morris Library / 122

[http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec304web.pdf]

NYTimes: The Social Network As A Career Safety Net

2008-08-16T17:41:00.012-05:00

New York Times / August 14 2008

The Social Network as a Career Safety Net

By SARAH JANE TRIBBLE

IF you have avoided social-networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook with the excuse that they are the domain of desperate job hunters or attention-seeking teenagers, it’s time to reconsider. In a world of economic instability and corporate upheaval, savvy professionals like the technology consultant Josh So epitomize the benefits of brushing up your online image and keeping it polished.

When Mr. So, a 32-year-old from Dublin, Calif., learned he had 45 days to find a new job before his company eliminated his division, he turned to friends online. Within hours of updating his job status on the social-networking site LinkedIn, Mr. So won four job interviews through his contacts there. Within a week, two of the interviews resulted in offers. And within less than a month, his employer counteroffered with a position in another division and a $25,000 bump in his annual salary.

The old business adage that it’s not what you know but who you know takes a twist in the Internet era: it’s what you know about social-networking sites that can get you ahead. “Build your own inner circle of people you know are good — people you know will get you places,” Mr. So said.

While it lacks the glamour of more popular sites like MySpace and Facebook, LinkedIn “is the place to be,” said the JupiterResearch media analyst Barry Parr, if you want to make professional contacts online. LinkedIn is a “Chamber of Commerce mixer,” he said. LinkedIn has more than 25 million members, and it is adding new ones at the rate of 1.2 million a month — or about one new networker every two seconds.

Bernard Lunn, a Web technology entrepreneur in New York, describes LinkedIn as the ultimate Rolodex.

[http://www.linkedin.com/]

“I’m no spring chicken,” said Mr. Lunn, 53. “I’ve been in business for almost 30 years. I had lost touch with a lot of people and had spent time in different industries.” The Web site did the work of finding people for him, providing a list of likely connections by searching its own database of people who had overlapped with him at past jobs. All Mr. Lunn had to do was review the list and select contacts he wanted to add to his network.

[snip]

If LinkedIn is the Chamber of Commerce luncheon, then Facebook is the after-hours party (and MySpace is the all-night rave, which may make trolling for business connections there a bit trying). “Facebook seems a more natural way of communicating,” said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst for eMarketer in Seattle. “LinkedIn seems more formal."

[http://www.facebook.com/]

"Facebook, which began in 2004 as a way for college students to communicate, has more than 80 million active users. The fastest-growing segment is now those 25 years old and older, according to the company. The site makes it easy to carry on a casual conversation or ask group questions. The easiest way to use it professionally is to join your employer’s network. And it helps to post interesting links that are relevant to your job.

The site features classified ads in the Facebook Marketplace, and there are job-hunting applications on the site, like Jobster. There are also tools for building a professional profile or online business cards. And you can use one of a handful of applications, liked LinkedIn Contacts, to connect your Facebook profile to LinkedIn.

[snip]

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/technology/personaltech/14basics.html]

The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age

2008-08-16T14:06:00.015-05:00

The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age

Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui, Editors

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2008

Cloth / 978-0-472-07043-5 / $70.00 ; Paper / 978-0-472-05043-7 / $24.95

Investigates the multi-faceted nature of hyperlinks and their consequences for commerce, communication, and civic discourse in the world of digital media.

"Links" are among the most basic---and most unexamined---features of online life. Bringing together a prominent array of thinkers from industry and the academy, The Hyperlinked Society addresses a provocative series of questions about the ways in which hyperlinks organize behavior online. How do media producers' considerations of links change the way they approach their work, and how do these considerations in turn affect the ways that audiences consume news and entertainment? What role do economic and political considerations play in information producers' creation of links? How do links shape the size and scope of the public sphere in the digital age? Are hyperlinks "bridging" mechanisms that encourage people to see beyond their personal beliefs to a broader and more diverse world? Or do they simply reinforce existing bonds by encouraging people to ignore social and political perspectives that conflict with their existing interests and beliefs?

This pathbreaking collection of essays will be valuable to anyone interested in the now taken for granted connections that structure communication, commerce, and civic discourse in the world of digital media.

"This collection provides a broad and deep examination of the social, political, and economic implications of the evolving, web-based media environment. The Hyperlinked Society will be a very useful contribution to the scholarly debate about the role of the internet in modern society, and especially about the interaction between the internet and other media systems in modern society."

Charles Steinfield, Professor and Chairperson, Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media, Michigan State University.

Joseph Turow is Robert Lewis Shayon Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and author of nine books, including Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age and Breaking up America: Advertisers and the New Media World.

Lokman Tsui is a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. His research interests center on new media and global communication.

[snip]

Contents

Introduction: On Not Taking the Hyperlink for Granted / Joseph Turow

Part 1: Hyperlinks and the Organization of Attention

Preface to Part 1

Structuring a Marketplace of Attention / James G. Webster

The Hyperlink as Organizing Principle / Alexander Halavais

Hyperlinking and the Forces of “Massification” / Philip M. Napoli

The Hyperlink in Newspapers and Blogs / Lokman Tsui

The Role of Expertise in Navigating Links of Influence / Eszter Hargittai

Google, Links, and Popularity versus Authority / Seth Finkelstein

Part 2: Hyperlinks and the Business of Media

Preface to Part 2

The Hyperlinked News Organization / Martin Nisenholtz

How Hyperlinks Ought to Change the Advertising Business /Tom Hespos

Hyperlinks and Marketing Insight / Stacey Lynn Schulman

Hyperlinking and Advertising Strategy / Eric Picard

From Hyperlinks to Hyperties / Marc A. Smith

Part 3: Hyperlinks, the Individual and the Social

Preface to Part 3

The Morality of Links / David Weinberger

Linked Geographies: Maps as Mediators of Reality / Stefaan G. Verhulst

Will Peasants Map? Hyperlinks, Map Mashups, and the Future of Information / Jeremy W. Crampton

The Social Hyperlink / Lada A. Adamic

Are Hyperlinks “Weak Ties”? / Markus Prior

What Is the Online Public Sphere Good For? / Matthew Hindman

Selected Bibliography

About the Authors

Index

Full Text Available

[http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.5680986.0001.001]

Buy The Book

[http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=297291]

WebJunction Launches New Online Social Experience

2008-08-14T18:16:00.007-05:00

DUBLIN, Ohio, August 13, 2008. WebJunction, the online learning community for librarians and library staff, has launched a new social and learning experience in close collaboration with partners in 15 state libraries. The new site builds on the deep repository of helpful content, relevant courses, and active discussions that have been the hallmark of WebJunction since 2003.

The new capabilities make it easier for librarians and staff to:

Connect with friends, peers, and colleagues from across the library community using powerful new social tools such as friends, public profiles, groups, discussions, tagging, and recommendations;

Create their own content, conversations, and spontaneous communities with fast, fun and easy-to-use tools;

Learn the skills they need to thrive in their careers with new and more flexible online courses covering general business, technical, and library skills, complimented by powerful social and learning management tools that add depth to the experience.

"WebJunction and our partners have been helping libraries take advantage of collaboration and e-learning tools for the past five years," said George Needham, Vice President, OCLC Member Services. "This latest release continues that work, and also brings some of the social tools of the modern Web to the library community in a unique and tailored way."

Originally launched five years ago with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, OCLC, and partners from across the library community, WebJunction has grown to over 30,000 registered members and has delivered thousands of courses.

[http://www.librarytechnology.org/ltg-displayarticle.pl?RC=13453]

Blog

[http://blog.webjunctionworks.org/index.php/2008/08/12/the-next-webjunction-%E2%80%93-what-a-first-week/]

Video

[http://webjunction.org/getting-started/articles/content/3384259]

Business/Professional Online Social Networks?

2008-08-13T11:55:00.010-05:00

Colleagues/

I am greatly interested in learning of Any and All Business / Professional Online Social Networks.

I am aware of LinkedIn and a few others that I've previously blogged at

[http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/2008/03/not-just-facebook-online-social.html]

BTW: Some May Be Interested In The Several SciTech Social Networks That I Recently Profiled On My "SciTechNet(sm)" Blog At

[http://scitechnet.blogspot.com/]

Please Recommend A Business/Professional Online Social Network As A Comment On This Blog Entry

Thanks!

/Gerry

Dow Jones Introduces g2 BI Tool With Social Networking

2008-08-08T19:08:00.006-05:00

Dow Jones & Co. (www.dowjones.com) announced the latest version of its g2 offering, an on-demand business intelligence application. The latest version provides linking with B2B social networking tools. g2 allows organizations to proactively identify, qualify, and connect to desired companies and executive contacts through patented technology that crawls the web and maintains databases in real time, unveiling intelligence on companies, personnel, and news. Dow Jones’ technology filters through more than 150,000 news articles daily from more than 25,000 different media sources and more than 3 million blogs to obtain this comprehensive business intelligence. Additionally, more than 100 triggers are monitored and detected daily through the mined business intelligence data.

g2 offers a database of nearly 4 million companies and 9 million executives that serve as the starting point for relationship mapping; the newest version of g2 expands on the current offering by enabling users to easily import contacts from leading applications such as Microsoft Outlook and LinkedIn. Similarly, Dow Jones’ other on-demand business intelligence application, SalesWorks, includes simple integration from executive profiles to LinkedIn, to extend access to more business information.

Enhancements include the following:

The ability to connect executives and companies through a user’s best relationship path by optimizing corporate and personal networks through the Position search feature

The ability to add single contacts using the biography editor

The option to display company keywords on the company search page

The ability to set personal affiliates to a private setting

New processing tools that have improved the global search capabilities by allowing users to view more executive, company, and news results per page

Enhanced search engine optimization tools that include meta keywords on the company summary page, making it easy to view the specific words and terms that a company uses to generate traffic to its website

The addition of Canadian provinces to the search fields in triggers, companies, and executives

Source

[http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/wndReader.asp?ArticleId=50210]

Demo

[http://www.brainshark.com/generate/g2]

See Also

[http://www.generateinc.com/g2.aspx ]

[http://www.generateinc.com/uploads/docs/dj_g2_11.pdf]

[http://www.customerthink.com/news/dow_jones_next_generation_g2]

AquaBrowser: Reviews and Ratings Functionality

2008-07-18T10:47:00.006-05:00

Denver, CO July 9, 2008 - Medialab, creator of the leading search and discovery platform AquaBrowser,
announced the general release of My Discoveries with functionality for users to create reviews and ratings and view personal tags. These features boost the existing AquaBrowser social networking experience to create a true global community for library users worldwide.

My Discoveries [http://www.aquabrowser.com/advantages/my-discoveries/] was introduced in 2007 and initially allowed users to tag items, search and refine on user tags, plus create, share and search on user lists. My Discoveries with LibraryThing [http://www.librarything.com/] content has been seeding library catalogs with 21 million tags created by users of LibraryThing.com. Now with the latest release of MyDiscoveries, users can review and rate items and view personal tag clouds. The User Interface was also enhanced to be more intuitive based on patron comments and customer feedback.

“Our customers are now enjoying complete social library bliss: a smoothly integrated social library platform, pre-populated with the richest social library content in the world. My Discoveries is a great example of when modern, component-based web 2.0 platforms are mixed and mashed together, without waiting for integrated systems to catch up. It’s here, right now,” stated Taco Ekkel, Director of Development at Medialab Solutions.

Ratings are easily created using the star system employed at other popular sites such as Netflix©. Individuals see not only the rating they’ve attached to an item, but the averaged global community rating based on all user input across all My Discoveries libraries worldwide. And the user functionality to create tags, lists, reviews and ratings is now accessible at both the results list and title level.

Blacklisting support for tags has been expanded and is also available for reviews. Although libraries are embracing library 2.0 technology, there is still a desire to monitor language that appears in the library’s website and catalog. Library staff may also monitor their statistics for how many tags, lists, ratings and reviews are being created in their local system as well as globally.

"It’s important for libraries to offer a modern social networking experience to their patrons, and we’re pleased that AquaBrowser My Discoveries has matured to fulfill this need. Patron feedback, librarian requests, and functionality in other social websites have been vital in growing My Discoveries to become the leading library social networking site” explained Bas Zwaan, CEO of Medialab Solutions BV.

Source

[http://www.aquabrowser.com/2008/07/aquabrowser-releases-reviews-and-ratings-functionality-in-my-discoveries/]

Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking

2008-06-06T14:13:00.010-05:00

Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking / Vickery, Graham. ;
Wunsch - Vincent, Sacha /

Abstract

Drawing on an expanding array of intelligent web services and applications, a growing number of people are creating, distributing and exploiting user-created content (UCC) and being part of the wider participative web. This study describes the rapid growth of UCC and its increasing role in worldwide communication, and draws out implications for policy. Questions addressed include: What is user-created content? What are its key drivers, its scope and different forms? What are the new value chains and business models? What are the extent and form of social, cultural and economic opportunities and impacts? What are the associated challenges? Is there a government role, and what form could it take?

Table of Contents

/ Foreword/ Summary / Definition, measurement and drivers / Emerging value chains and business models / Economic impacts / Social impacts / Opportunities and challenges /

Chapter 1. Introduction / Chapter 2. Defining and Measuring the Participative Web and User-Created Content-Definition-Measurement / Chapter 3. Drivers of User-Created Content-Technological drivers-Social drivers-Economic drivers-Institutional and legal drivers / Chapter 4. Types of User-Created Content and Distribution Platforms-UCC types--Text--Photos and images--Music and audio--Video and film--User-created content posted on products and other interest areas-UCC platforms--Blogs--Wikis and other text-based collaboration formats--Group-based aggreatation and social bookmarking--Podcasting--Social networking sites--Virtual world content / Chapter 5. Emerging Value Chains and Business Models-The emerging value and publishing chain of user-created content-Monetisation of user-created content and new business models / Chapter 6. Economic and Social Impacts-Economic Impacts--Consumer electronics, ICT hardware, software, network service and platforms--Users/creators--Traditional media--Professional content creators--Search engines and advertising--Services that capitalise on UCC--Marketing and brands--Use of UCC and participative web tools in business-Social Impacts--Increased user autonomy, participation, and communication--Cultural impacts--Citizenship engagement and politics--Educational and information impact--Impact on ICT and other skills--Social and legal challenges / Chapter 7. Opportunities and Challenges for Users, Business and Policy-Enhancing R&D, innovation and technology-Developing competitive, non-discriminatory policy frameworks-Enhancing the infrastructure--Broadband access--Convergence and regulation-Regulatory environment--Intellectual property rights and user-created content--Digital rights management--Freedom of expression--Information and content quality--Mature, inappropriate and illegal content--Safety on the internet and awareness raising--Privacy and identity theft--Impact of intensive internet use--Network security and spam--Virtual worlds, property rights, and taxation--Governments as producers and users of content-Conceptualisation, classification, and measurement /

Annex / Bibliography / Notes /

[Paris] : Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development / c2007 / 124 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. / ISBN: 9789264037465 / Price: €24 ; $29 ; £17 ; ¥3300 /

[SourceOECD Science & Information Technology , vol. 2007, no. 15, pp. 1-128]

[http://oberon.sourceoecd.org/vl=9678158/cl=32/nw=1/rpsv/~6681/v2007n15/s1/p1l]

FREE PDF VERSION

[http://213.253.134.43/oecd/pdfs/browseit/9307031E.PDF]

Total Makeover: Change of Facebook Profile

2008-05-26T11:45:00.014-05:00

New York Times / May 21, 2008, 2:48 pm

Big Changes Coming to Profile Pages on Facebook
By BRAD STONE

Profile pages on Facebook are getting a total makeover.

Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif., held an hourlong briefing for the news media Wednesday to preview changes coming to the site next month.

The biggest change: user profiles on the service will evolve from a single, flat and often cluttered page into four tabbed sub-pages dubbed feed, info, photos and applications.

[snip]

Feed, the primary page people will see when they visit other users on the service, will broadcast all of a user’s’ recent Facebook activities — photos he or she uploaded, wall messages and new friends, for example. Users can expand or shrink these updates to, for example, show more thumbnails from a new set of photos, and will have more control over the information their friends see about them.

The info tab will contain all the data typically found on Facebook pages today — a person’s contact information, education history and top friends, for example. The photo tab will have a portfolio of images.

Finally, programs created by third-party developers since last summer and installed by users are relegated to a fourth “application boxes” tab and will generally become less visible.

[more]

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/big-changes-coming-to-profile-pages-on-facebook/index.html]

Facebook Profile Preview Information Page

This spring, Facebook will be launching a redesigned profile aimed at making things simpler, cleaner, and more relevant, while still giving you control over your own profile. We want profiles to be a destination to learn about and interact with your friends.

To give everyone an opportunity to preview upcoming improvements to Facebook, understand the motivations behind them, and offer feedback on the initial designs. While some upcoming changes may take getting used to, ultimately they will lead to a better, faster, more useful Facebook.

[http://www.facebook.com/FacebookPreviews]

The Facebook Blog /Check out Facebook Profiles Preview /

Facebook Profiles Preview's Video

[http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=653597488324

Facebook 2.0 Group

Facebook 2.0 is intended to serve as a forum and venue for Facebook users and non-users to recommend and discuss enhancements to Facebook features and functionalities. Suggestions of present and future Facebook Apps that may enhance library programs and services are of particular interest. The organization and configuration of Facebook elements are also of great interest.

[http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6164555988]

CourseFeed + Facebook = Social Learning

2008-05-22T15:26:00.013-05:00

CourseFeed + Facebook = Social Learning

Students go to class to both socialize and learn. CourseFeed combines actual learning content from leading learning management systems with the leading social network - Facebook. CourseFeed introduces learning content into the already thriving social network making time on Facebook productive. Students love CourseFeed because they get instantly informed of all new course work via email alerts and a news feed. CourseFeed not only closes the communication gap between students and instructors, it makes learning social by providing classmates a way to connect, interact, and collaborate.

[http://www.coursefeed.com/index.html]

CourseFeed is therefore a “mash-up” between online school content and Facebook. CourseFeed’s seamless integration with a school’s LMS ensures classmates displayed in a CourseFeed course are the same students enrolled in corresponding LMS course. Users see names and photos of their classmates and are given tools to interact – making online course work social and collaborative. CourseFeed’s alerts let students know when a change is made in the LMS course and provide single-click access to course content (no more hunting around). Below is a list of CourseFeed features:

CourseFeed Features

Automated setup of courses in less than a minute
Network and see everyone in your course – guaranteed accurate course roster
Course Wall
File storage for course notes, etc.
Profile display to let friends know when you're in class
View all online course materials without leaving Facebook
Course feed shows when instructors posts announcements, files, etc. to your course
View all announcements, new or old, in the announcements area
One-click access into your school's online content system and auto-navigation that takes you right to the item

[http://www.coursefeed.com/theapp.html]

CourseFeed makes online learning social. Students go to class for all kinds of reasons – to hang out with friends, to get a degree, and to learn – probably in that order. As more and more instruction goes online the “real” classroom experience is left behind. We at CourseFeed believe the best learning experiences require that groups of students be involved, engaged, and interested. The so-called online learning management systems of today are sterile data repositories that manage data transfer, not learning.

CourseFeed recognizes the role social interaction plays in learning and lets schools extend the classroom experience into the social networks students already thrive in. CourseFeed makes the online learning management system social, interesting, and engaging by pairing learning content with social connections – how classrooms really work.

[http://www.coursefeed.com/social_learning.html]

FAQ

[http://www.coursefeed.com/faq.html]

CourseFeed Facebook App

[http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5243732877]