Lecture 1: Social Web Introduction (2014)

Social Web
2014

Lecture 1: Introduction to Social Web?

Lora Aroyo

The Network Institute

VU University Amsterdam

Course Organization

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

Goals of the course

Understand Try how the Social Web works

ü 
ü 
ü 
ü 

What IS the Social Web Social Computing?

What people DO on the Social Web?

How is DATA on the Social Web ACCESSED?

How is Social Web DATA used for STUDIES?

ü  What are typical Social Web APPLICATIONS?

ü  What are Social Web research CHALLENGES?

Social Web 2014, Lora Aroyo

You will learn about

ü  data formats

ü  social web platforms

ü  data mining, analysis, visualization
reuse across applications

ü  user-generated content

ü  personalization in Social Web apps

ü  interdisciplinary research

ü  critical thinking


Format of the course

ü  Lots of WORK, and lots of FUN

ü  Lots of interaction

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

•  vote on questions by Monday 10:00

•  discuss on selected topics during lectures on Monday

•  group work during hands-on sessions

•  presentations of ﬁnal assignments

ü  Use name or VUNetID to identify yourself in website postings


How does it work

ü  before the Lectures: do the required reading assignments

ü  Assignments Hands-on: done in groups

ü  state who did what in the Acknowledgements section

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

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

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


Schedule

ü  Interactive Lectures: Mondays 3:30-5:15

assignments hands-on introduced during lecture

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

practical exercises work on assignments

ü  Final Presentations: in week 12


Grading

ü  Assignment 1 (15%)



ü  Final Assignment: application presentation (15%)

ü  Final Assignment: individual report (30%)

ü  Questions/Discussion (10%)


Why Social Web?


digital technology

is changing both how words and ideas are created and
proliferate, and how they are studied.


social media is a rich
resource that provides

a fuller picture of today s cultural norms,
dialogue, trends and events to inform scholarship,
the legislative process, new works of authorship,
education and other purposes.


How much content is
consumed created every
second?


In 2011

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

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

In 2012

8000 tweets/sec during
Madonna’s performance

In 2014

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


In 2010


In 2010

In 2011: 48 hrs of
video uploaded/min

In 2011: 3 billion

views/day

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664377/infographic-of-the-day-the-alchemy-behind-facebook-and-youtube


The Rise of Users Content

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

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


2011

2012

18.1 mil followers Lady Gaga à most popular Twitter user

327,452 tweets/min when Barack Obama was re-elected à
most ever

250 mil tweets/day

~175 mil tweets/day

~ 307 tweets/user

~ 51 followers/user

163 bil tweets since Twitter started

#egypt hashtag

819,000+ re-tweets of Barack Obama’s tweet “Four more
years” à most re-tweets ever

8,868 tweets/sec for MTV Video Music Awards (Aug 2011)

9.66 mil tweets during opening ceremony of London 2012
Olympics

$50,000 raised for charity by most re-tweeted tweet of 2011

2.7 bil/day likes on Facebook

39 mil Tumblr blogs (end 2011)

187 mil members on LinkedIn (Sep 2012)

70 mil WordPress blogs (end 2011)

135 mil/month active users on Google+

1 bil WhatsApp messages during one day (Oct 2011)

5 bil times/day ”+1” button on Google+ is used

2.4 bil social networking accounts worldwide

123 heads of state that have a Twitter account

http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/01/17/internet-2011-in-numbers/

http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/01/16/internet-2012-in-numbers/


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

What do those numbers
mean?


Our goal is to ...

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

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


How did it all start?


1969 - WWW

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


1994 – Last.fm



2003 - Twitter



2007 – Google+



The Big Ones


2001: Wikipedia

2000: Nupedia - articles written by experts licensed as free content

founded by Jimmy Wales with Larry Sanger (editor-in-chief)

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

Articles: 19,700 (2002), 3,835,000 (2012), 4,157,698 (2013)

Wiki pages: 29,355,491 (2013)


Community-based Systems

ü  Participation vs. lurking

ü  Social capital

ü  Social networking

ü  Trust reputation

ü  Privacy presence

Peter Brusilovsky, Social Web Course, University of Pittsburgh


2004: Facebook

distinct college networks only

(Harvard-only SNS)


2005: Facebook

including other universities, high school students, professionals
inside corporate networks, and eventually - everyone

ability for outside developers to build Applications


2007: Facebook API

Platform that consists of

a Facebook variant of HTML =

Facebook Markup Language (FBML)

a Facebook variant of SQL =

FQL (Facebook Query Language)

not based on open standards

sites support: Bebo Meebo


2010: Facebook
Open Graph


2012: Facebook Goes Public

“ ... eight years after its computerhacking CEO Mark Zuckerberg started
the service at Harvard University.

We cannot assure you that
we will effectively manage
our growth.
... it hopes to raise $5 billion in its IPO.
That would be the most for an Internet
IPO since Google Inc. and its early
backers raised $1.9 billion in 2004.

2013: Facebook Graph Search


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

•  500 million users

•  340 million tweets daily

•  1.6 billion search queries daily

•  is in the10th most visited
websites

•  becomes the the SMS of the
Internet

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


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


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

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

•  Data Liberation policy


SNS

#Users
2012

#Users
2013

# Active
Users
2012

Facebook

Twitter

Google+

Instagram

Vine

YouTube

Printerest

LinkedIn

500 Mil

235 Mil
(monthly)

# Active
Users
2014

# Posts
Monthly

mid 2013

begin 2013


end 2013


Social Computing

•  interdisciplinary study

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

•  internet provides a good platform for emerging social structures

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

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


Tenets of Social Computing *

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

•  value will shift from ownership to
experience

•  power will shift from institutions to
communities

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


New Means of Communication

•  beyond email, text messaging mobile
phone

•  asynchronous (not requiring real-time
response)

•  a lot of communication seems irrelevant
trivial

•  some can be helpful interesting

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

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


New Form of Communities

•  Social Web sites are in essence online communities

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

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

e.g. the role of communities in the Arab Spring, unrests in Turkey, Ukraine,

Russia Olympics, Occupy Wall Street, etc.


New Source of Knowledge

•  beyond what search engines can dig into

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

•  folklore knowledge

•  friends-based news updates

•  friends-based serendipity

• 

worldwide directories of people


New Source of Entertainment

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

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

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


New Venue for Self-expression

• 

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

• 

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

• 

the personal posting many people do appears
to help them to derive a sense of selfassurance and belonging


New Venue for Self-expression

• 

a surprisingly large number of people
have had a strong desire for selfexpression and desire for selfsatisfaction that comes from helping
others

• 

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

• 

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


Social web sites
=
social networking sites
+
social media sites


Social Sites Categories

ü  Social networking sites (open vs. closed)

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

•  Vertical, e.g. Dogster, Couchsurﬁng

ü  Social media sites (open vs. closed)

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

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


Diversity in Cultures

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

MySpace: US abroad

Friendster: Paciﬁc Islands

Orkut: Brazil, India

Mixi: Japan

LunarStorm: Sweden

Hyves: NL

Grono: Poland

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Hi5: South America, Europe

Bebo: UK, New Zealand, Australia

QQ: China

Cyworld: Korea

Skyrock: France

Windows Live Spaces: Mexico,
Italy, and Spain


2011: FB vs. Orkut in Brazil

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


Diversity in Activities

•  aSmallWorld BeautifulPeople: restricted access - appear
selective elite

•  Couchsurﬁng: activity-centered

•  BlackPlanet: identity-driven

•  MyChurch: afﬁliation-focused

•  Usenet public discussion forums: structured by topics

•  SNS are structured as personal networks

•  egocentric”: individual at the center of their own community

•  mirror unmediated social structures


SNS: Features

• 

Personal proﬁles

• 

Establishing online
connections

• 

Participating in online
groups

• 

Communicating with online
connections

• 

Sharing user generated
content

• 

Expressing opinions

• 

Finding information

• 

Retaining users


Expressing Opinions

•  Allowing members to leave comments on the content,
voting by ranking (3 out of 5 stars), or marking as
favorite, ﬂagging as spam/inappropriate

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

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

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


Reflections ...

• 

Twitter profile vs. Facebook profile?

• 

Find friends on different networks?

• 

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

• 

Pros cons of (a)symmetry of friendship?

• 

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

• 

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

• 

FB vs Google+ actions for retaining users?


Where do YOU come in

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

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


The New Web:
The Web of People

Peter Brusilovsky, Social Web Course, University of Pittsburgh


image source: http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/bionicteaching/1375254387/

Hands-on Teaser

• 

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

• 

some Python command line experience

• 

Twitter data

• 

check out the getting started guide on course website
http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/socialweb2014

• 

check out the exercises in the book: Mining the Social Web (Second Edition),
by Matthew A. Russell


Lecture 1: Social Web Introduction (2014)

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