PA159: Introduction to Social Media
and Social Networks
Michail Tsikerdekis
tsikerdekis@gmail.com
http://tsikerdekis.wuwcorp.com
December 13, 2012
What is Social Media?
“Social media is a group of
Internet-based applications
that build on the ideological
and technological foundations
of Web 2.0, and that allow the
creation and exchange of
user-generated content.” p.
61
Source: Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The
challengesand opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59–68.
doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003 Source: http://blogs.earthlink.net/the-4-ps-of-social-media-etiquette/
What is Social Media
Social Media Classifications
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59–68. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2011). The early bird catches the news: Nine things you should know about micro-blogging.Business Horizons, 54(2), 105–113.
doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2010.09.004
Social Presence / Media Richness
Low Low-
Medium
Medium High
Self
Representa
tion / Self-
Disclosure
High Blogs Micro-
blogging
Social
Networking
Sites
Virtual
Social
Worlds
Low Collaborative
Projects
Content
Communities
Virtual
Game
Worlds
Social Media Classifications
Blogs Collaborative
Projects
Microblogging Social
Networking Sites
Content
Communities
Virtual Social
Worlds
Virtual Game
Worlds
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59–68. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2011). The early bird catches the news: Nine things you should know about micro-blogging.Business Horizons, 54(2), 105–113.
doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2010.09.004
Characteristics of Social Media
 Participation: it blurs the line between media and audience.
 Openness: Everyone has a voice. Content seen as authentic
and trustworthy?
 Conversation: Two (or more) way conversation between
people rather than one-way broadcasting.
 Community: Support formation, growth and strength of
communities around a particular shared interest.
 Connectedness: Thrives on being connected, making use of
links to other sites, resources, people.
Source: Mayfield, Anthony. 2007. What is Social Media? (Online resource: http://www.icrossing.co.uk/fileadmin/uploads/eBooks/What_is_Social_Media_iCrossing_ebook.pdf).
ICrossing.
Applications of Social media
Entertainment Workplace
Source: http://thechinabeat.blogspot.cz/2008/10/wow-in-china-and-us.html
. Accessed September 8, 2012
Source: Sarah Houghton, Source: Flickr.com
How Popular are Social Media
Services?
112.8 million blogs and over
250 million pieces of
tagged social media in June
2008, a specialist blog
search engine
More than 13 million hours of
video were uploaded during
2010 and 48 hours of video
per minute, resulting in
nearly 8 years of content
uploaded every day
More than 800 million active
users
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technorati,http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics,http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
Today’s Forecast
“[…] the rate of change and
development of new features
of social media will continue
for the foreseeable future.” p.
256
Source: Poynter, R. (2010). The Handbook of Online and Social Media Research: Tools and Techniques for Market Researchers. John Wiley & Sons.
Addiction to Social Media
 Social media services “may
be addictive.”
 The average user spends
approximately 55 minutes a
day engaging in a social media
service, which may make the
user develop a “fear of
missing out,” or withdrawal
symptoms if such a user is
deprived of it for a certain
amount of time.
Source: A day without social media, University of Maryland, College Park, USA - http://withoutmedia.wordpress.com/
Highlights: Addiction to Social Media
 Students use literal terms of addiction to characterize their
dependence on media.
 Students hate going without media. In their world, going without
media, means going without their friends and family.
 Students show no significant loyalty to a news program, news
personality or even news platform. They get news in a
disaggregated way, often via friends.
 18-21 year old college students are constantly texting and on
Facebook—with calling and email distant seconds as ways of
staying in touch, especially with friends.
 Students could live without their TVs and the newspaper, but they
can’t survive without their iPods.
Could you live for two weeks without
access to social media?
First popular web browser: Mosaic
(1993)
 Protocols supported: Archie,
FTP, gopher, HTTP, NNTP,
telnet, WAIS
 Display images inline with
text instead of displaying
images in a separate window
How the web worked during the 1990s
Joey Bernal. (2009). Web 2.0 and Social Networking for the Enterprise. Pearson Education.
Web 2.0 Darcy DiNucci (January 1999)
“The Web we know now, which loads into a
browser window in essentially static screenfuls, is only
an embryo of the Web to come. The first glimmerings
of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just
starting to see how that embryo might develop. The
Web will be understood not as screenfulls of text and
graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether
through which interactivity happens. It will [...] appear
on your computer screen, [...] on your TV set [...] your
car dashboard [...] your cell phone [...] hand-held
game machines [...] maybe even your microwave
oven.”
Graphical representation of AJAX
A more technical depiction AJAX
Web 2.0 and Social Media
Tremendous Change in our Lives
Social Media are Here to Stay
What is a Social Network?
A social network is a social structure made up of
individuals (or organizations) called "nodes", which
are tied (connected) by one or more specific types
of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship,
common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual
relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge
or prestige.
Online communities are Web sites where user
relationships develop.
Source: Wikipedia (2011). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network. Accessed November 2011.
Source: Buss, A. and Strauss, N., Online Community Handbook: Building Your Business and Brand on the Web, 2009
Comparison of Social Networks and
Online Communities (1)
A social network
• Has an organizational
structure focused around an
individual’s one-to-one
relationships.
• Has weak secondary
connections between
members.
• Allows its users to be
members of many
communities in the network
at the same time.
An online community
• Has an organizational
structure focused around a
shared purpose rather than
one-to-one relationships.
• Has strong, predictable
secondary relationships
among members.
• Is distinct from other
communities because of
differences in purpose,
policies, and computing
environment.
Source: Tharon Howard, Elsevier - Morgan Kaufmann Design to Thrive Creating Social Networks Edition 2010
Comparison of Social Networks and
Online Communities (2)
Source: Tharon Howard, Elsevier - Morgan Kaufmann Design to Thrive Creating Social Networks Edition 2010
A social network
• Is good for sharing
activities.
• Is less effective at
activities requiring
cooperation and collective
action.
• Makes it easier for users
to build communities.
An online community
• Is good for activities
requiring sharing and
cooperation.
• Is effective at providing
the framework for
activities requiring
collective action.
• Should not be confused
with “adhocracies”,
“discussion groups”,
“forums”, or “lists”.
Shirky's ladder
Sharing
Ideal for social networks, i.e. exchanging photos
Cooperation
takes more effort and demands more complexity,
organizing activity for gathering resources for a party,
strong secondary connections needed
Collective action
dealing with large organizational structures, such as unions,
government agencies, corporations.
Source: Shirky, C. (2009). Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together (p. 344). Penguin.
Social network sites
Social network sites are defined as web-based
services that allow individuals to:
construct a
public or semipublic
profile
within a
bounded system
articulate a list of
other users with
whom they share
a connection
view and
traverse their list
of connections
and those made
by others within
the system.
Source: boyd, d. m. and Ellison, N. B. (2007), Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-MediatedCommunication, 13: 210–230.
“social network site” ≠ “social
networking sites”
 “‘Networking’ emphasizes relationship initiation, often
between strangers.”
 In a network, “Participants are not necessarily ‘networking’
or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily
communicating with people who are already a part of their
extended social network.”
“What makes social network sites unique is not that they
allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they
enable users to articulate and make visible their social
networks.”
Source: boyd, d. m. and Ellison, N. B. (2007), Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-MediatedCommunication, 13: 210–230.
Ingredients for a social network site
Construct a
public or semipublic
profile
within a
bounded system
Articulate a list
of other users
with whom they
share a
connection
View and
traverse their list
of connections
and those made
by others within
the system.
Source: boyd, d. m. and Ellison, N. B. (2007), Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-MediatedCommunication, 13: 210–230.
Technological Considerations for Social
Media & SNS
Examples of Web 2.0 Core
technologies
Client-side
AJAX
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flex framework
JavaScript/Ajax frameworks
such as Dojo Toolkit or jQuery
Server-side
PHP
Ruby
Perl
Python
JSP
Facebook technologies
 The company is the largest user in the world of memcached, an
open source caching system, and has one of the largest MySQL
database clusters anywhere.
 Second most-trafficked PHP site in the world (Yahoo is #1)
 Lightweight but powerful multi-language RPC framework that
allows us to seamlessly and easily tie together subsystems written
in any language, running on any platform.
 Facebook is built in PHP, C++, Perl, Python, Erlang, Java.
 We've created a custom-built search engine serving millions of
queries a day, completely distributed and entirely in-memory, with
real-time updates.
What is memcached?
Free & open source, high-performance, distributed memory
object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use
in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating
database load.
Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks
of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database
calls, API calls, or page rendering.
Memcached is simple yet powerful. Its simple design
promotes quick deployment, ease of development, and solves
many problems facing large data caches. Its API is available for
most popular languages.
Why memcached?
A memcached example
How many servers does Facebook
have?
Facebook Server Estimate
In a presentation in
November 2009, Facebook
vice president of technology
Jeff Rothschild disclosed that
the company had more than
30,000 servers.
Tom Cook at last week’s
Velocity 2010 conference
presented this figure in his
presentation. Effectively
making the servers 60.000 or
more!
Facebook's infrastructure probably
doesn't look like this
Server-Side Programming Trend
September 2011 – September 2012
September 2012 Usage of server-side
programming languages
Client-Side Programming Trend
September 2011 – September 2012
An example of binding all the
technologies
Designing Interaction for Social Media
and SNS
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Source: Kim, A. J. (2000). Community Building on the Web. Peachpit Press.
Examples of satisfying needs for
Security and Safety & Self-Esteem
Protecting against
Aggressive
content
Protecting against
Racist content
Controlling for
Pornographic
content
Safeguarding
against Abusive
content
Eliminating
Cyberbullying
Dealing with
Copyright Issues
Moderating the content
Youtube's automated approach: What
is the Content ID tool?
The Content ID tool is the latest way YouTube offers
copyright holders to easily identify and manage
their content on YouTube. The tool creates ID files
which are then run against user uploads and, if a
match occurs, the copyright holders policy
preferences are then applied to that video. Rights
owners can choose to block, track or monetize their
content.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/t/contentid
Youtube's Content ID Video
Software moderation: Bullytracer's
example
Rules based on a dictionary
of keywords are used to
classify a window of posts.
A truth set of MySpace
threads was created.
Identified correctly
windows containing
cyberbullying 85.30%, and
identified innocent 51.91%
The overall accuracy is
58.63%.
Source: Bayzick, Jennifer and Kontostathis, April and Edwards, Lynne (2011) Detecting the Presence of Cyberbullying Using Computer Software. pp. 1-2. In: Proceedingsof the ACM
WebSci'11, June 14-17 2011, Koblenz, Germany.
Best approach: Mixed-Methods(?)
Moderators as the main protective force of a social
network site
Users contributing by reporting what moderators
cannot see or do not have enough time to see(such
as personal messages)
Software used to detect suspicious messages which
moderators can investigate later on and evaluate
them
Cooperative principle
• Be Truthful: Do not say what you believe to be false. Do
not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Maxim of
Quality
• Make your contribution as informative as is required
and not more informative than required.
Maxim of
Quantity
• Relevance: Be relevant.
Maxim of
Relevance
• Be Clear: Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid
ambiguity. Be brief. Be orderly.
Maxim of
Manner
Source: Grice, Paul (1975). "Logic and conversation". In Syntax and Semantics, 3: Speech Acts, ed. P. Cole & J. Morgan. New York: Academic Press. Reprinted in Studies in the Way of
Words, ed. H. P. Grice, pp. 22–40. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1989)
Example: Maxim of Quality
Design, Development and
Management of a Social Network/ing
Site
The Friendster case
How old is Friendster?Image Source: Skloog. http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/12/history-of-social-media/.Accessed September 11, 2012
Friendster highlights
Friendster is built on the assumption that friends-of-friends
are more likely to be good dates than strangers.
While Stanley Milgram argues that everyone is connected
within 6 degrees, Friendster only allows you to see or
communicate with those who are within 4 degrees.
Friendster encourages users to join even if they are not
looking for dates Friendster launched into public beta in
the fall of 2002. By mid-August 2003, the site had 1.5
million registered accounts and was still growing
exponentially.
danah boyd (2003). "Reflections on Friendster, Trust and Intimacy." Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2003), Workshop application for the Intimate Ubiquitous Computing Workshop.
Seattle, WA, October 12-15, 2003.
Technical Difficulties
Friendster's servers and
databases were illequipped
to handle its
rapid growth, and the
site faltered regularly,
frustrating users who
replaced email with
Friendster.
Social difficulties
Upset cultural balance
Collapse in social
contexts
Fakesters & Trophy
Friends
Friendster's solution
Active deletion of
Fakesters (and genuine
users who chose nonrealistic
photos) signaled to
some that the company did
not share users' interests.
Many early adopters left
because of the
combination of technical
difficulties, social collisions,
and a rupture of trust
between users and the
site.
Source: boyd, d. m. and Ellison, N. B. (2007), Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-MediatedCommunication, 13: 210–230.
Friendster's Violations of Maslow's
Hierarchy
Psysiological (Restricting access either intentionally
or unintentionally)
Social (Not allowing users to form subgroups based
on their interests)
Self Actualization (Not allowing users to form their
identities as they wish or use pictures other than
the ones with their real faces)
Social network analysis
Social Network Analysis
It is useful for
investigations of kinship
patterns, community
structure, interlocking
directorships and so
forth
It is mainly an analysis
for relational data
Types of Nodes
Individuals: persons, other animals
Collectivities: organizations, departments, teams,
troops, countries, cities, species
Relations Among People
Kinship: - mother of, wife of
Other role-based: boss of, teacher of, friend of
Cognitive/perceptual: knows, aware of what they
know
Affective: likes, trusts
Interactions: give advice, talks to, fights with
Affiliations: belongs to same clubs, is physically near
Each relations yields a different structure & has
different effect!
Examples of Networks
An example of Social Network Analysis
study
Goals
How network analysis could allow us to capture the
social structure of the high school staff and teachers
at the start of a whole-school health promotion
intervention?
Identify key players or gatekeepers who might be
crucial to getting the intervention off the ground
Mapping networks systematically at the start of an
intervention, and analyzing them mathematically
Location and sample
High school in Alberta,
Canada with total student
population 556.
Mental health promotion
intervention modeled on
the experience of the
successful Gatehouse
project in Australia
Staff and teachers were
our focus for the first stage
of the intervention.
Map five relations across all teachers and staff in the school
based on initial consultation and pilot.
Relations:
– knew a person by name
– knew a person more personally
– engaged in regularly occurring conversations with a person
– sought advice from a person in relation to a school matter
– socialized with that person outside of school hours
Self administered questionnaires sent to staff and teachers
with questions focused on usual transactions and routine
relationships.
Design method
UCINET
Analysis Methods
Network degree centralization score
Network betweenness centralization score: measure of
strategic advantage and information control.
Two-step reach measure of the extent to which any person
could mobilize resources or convey information by reaching
out to others.
Others are measures about an individual person's position
in the network.
Classified people as: teachers, support staff, administration
Also conducted analysis of gender
Basic characteristics of the five
networks (n = 50)
Relationship Density
(%)
Degree
centralization (%)
Betweenness
centralization (%)
Socialize with
outside school
5.9 19.4 14.4
Seek advice 15.2 54.0 23.4
Engage in
conversation
regularly
25.5 39.3 4.8
Know
personally
29.0 38.9 4.63
Recognize by
name
65.9 27.4 1.47
Advice seeking network
Principal and Vice principal
The Principal has 37 direct ties and the Vice Principal has 35
direct ties in the advice-seeking network.
Freeman's degree centrality measure: 76%, 71%
Betweenness centrality: The Principal has four times the
score of Vice Principal for betweenness centrality because
the Principal is connected to some people who otherwise
seek advice from no one.
This increases his power and potentially makes him more
important or crucial.
Conclusions (1)
Density was related to what might thought of as the
intensity of the relationship.
Network density was higher for more superficial
relationships, such as knowing a person by name,
and smaller for socializing.
The density for knowing-by-name was lower than
we had expected at 65%.
That is, more people are in that awkward position
of encountering other staff and teachers, but not
being addressed by their name.
Conclusions (2)
No isolates in the know-by-name network.
Everyone was linked to someone, including all 10
newcomers.
Seeking advice was centered around the Principal
and Vice Principal
Seven people were unconnected in the adviceseeking
network, a phenomenon which could be
addressed, if perceived as a problem.
Applications
As an example, low density in the socializing network is
acceptable, but that low density, and in particular the
presence of isolated people, in the advice-seeking network
is not
Another common type of analysis is to search for cliques or
closely connected subgroups. Diagnostics depend on the
goals and purpose of the researcher.
Identifying people of strategic influence, so that
interventions can be tailored to them. Identify and recruit
natural leaders or helpers in communities.
Summary (1)
Social media and social network sites are tools, online
communities may use many of these tools
There is a great variety of technologies out there for
developing social media & social networks (php, HTML5,
python, MySQL, Memcached, Javascript, AJAX, Adobe
Flash)
Scaling up poses multiple technological and sociological
challenges even for famous social network sites today
There are many ways of developing and maintaining a
social network site. The options for the software and the
overall design are highly depended to the purpose of each
service.
Summary (2)
Technology changes rapidly; Humans don't! Social media &
SNS science is an interdisciplinary field where the social
part is intertwined with technological.
Maslow's hierarchy, RIBS and similar models can help
understand online user needs and be general guidelines for
developing tools. Providing access and security should be
the first and most important steps for building a
community.
Extracting information from social networks requires
planning head during the design stage. Relational data are
required for social network analysis.
Further Reading
John P. Scott. Social Network Analysis: A Handbook.
Sage Publications Ltd; 2nd edition (March 2000)
John P Scott (Editor), Peter Carrington (Editor). The
SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis. Sage
Publications Ltd (May 25, 2011)
Penelope Hawe and Laura Ghali Use of social
network analysis to map the social relationships of
staff and teachers at school Health Educ. Res.
(2008) 23(1): 62-69 first published online February
7, 2007 doi:10.1093/her/cyl162
Further Reading
Tharon Howard, Elsevier - Morgan Kaufmann Design to Thrive
Creating Social Networks Edition 2010
Amy J. Kim. Community Building on the Web : Secret Strategies
for Successful Online Communities. Peachpit Press, April 2000.
boyd, d. m. and Ellison, N. B. (2007), Social Network Sites:
Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of ComputerMediated
Communication, 13: 210–230.
Mayfield, Anthony. 2007. What is Social Media? (Online
resource:http://www.icrossing.co.uk/fileadmin/uploads/eBooks
/What_is_Social_Media_iCrossing_ebook.pdf). ICrossing.
Kaplan, Andreas M.; Michael Haenlein (2010). "Users of the
world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media".
Business Horizons 53 (1): 59–68.