CSCI 1107 Social Computing

Fall 2012

Adapted from materials by Dr. Bonnie MacKay (Dalhousie U.)

Contents

• Syllabus • Introduction

– A Brief History of Social Computing– What is Social Computing– Class Activity

Syllabus — Evaluation• 40% Term Project (group)

– 20% Project Milestones (4) and Project Log(using Facebook)

– 30% Project Proposal Write-up– 10% Final Proposal Presentation

(15 minutes + 5 minutes questions)– 15% Project Write-up

(approx. 8 pages in provided template)

• 60% Individual Work– 45% Tests and Exam– 5% Participation (includes mandatory labs) – 10% Assignments and Quizzes

Syllabus

Syllabus — Project Information• Made up of 4 Milestones

To help with the proposal and the final project

• Groups will decide and hand-in: Project topic and research question/hypothesis

• Milestone 1:– Literature review of what other researchers have done

(academic research – digital libraries)– Each group member submits a paper– Each group submits a group paper

Summary of group’s individual papers

Project Information

• Milestone 2:– Formalize and finalize your topic and research

question/hypothesis– Develop study design and user tasks and questionnaires

• Milestone 3:– Complete all elements of study

• Milestone 4 (after proposal and pilot study):– Draft report of results of study

Project InformationTopic / Goal

• Develop a new Social Computing App• [e.g., on small sized device]• (prototype)

• Modify or extend an existing Social Computing App• [e.g., on small sized device]• (prototype)

Project Information• Potential (Research) Questions:

• Is this application useful?• How does this new/modified/extension compare to the

current method?• Approach:

– Literature review– Develop a prototype of your proposed application– Design a user study asking participants to do different tasks

to help evaluate the usefulness of the new app or to compare the current app

Miscellaneous• Academic Integrity (see syllabus for full description)

– What does academic integrity mean?• Honesty and fairness, etc.– How can you achieve academic integrity?• Credit others for work, don’t copy or pass work off as your own, etc.– What if an allegation of an academic offence is made against

you?• I am required to report any suspect cases - see

http://academicintegrity.dal.ca/Files/AcademicDisciplineProcess.pdf• Where can you turn for help?

– Instructors– The Learning Center (FCS)– The Writing Center (Dalhousie)– The Library (Dalhousie)

CSCI 1107 Social Computing

Adapted from materials by Dr. Bonnie MacKay (Dalhousie U.)

Topics• Applications Survey• Evaluation - Usefulness, Effectiveness, User

Satisfaction, etc.– (e.g., study design, prototyping, analysis, etc.)

• Social Impacts• Social Computing Technologies

Why are we here?• To survey a variety of social computing applications

and learn how to evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of these applications.

• To be introduced to a variety of perspectives on the social issues and impacts that stem from social computing.

• To be introduced to the various technologies used to implement social computing applications and resulting issues.

A Brief History of Social Computing• The Background of Social Computing

– 1970s - Pre-Internet– 1980s - Pre-Web– 1990s - Web 1.0– 2000s - Web 2.0– ????s - Web 3.0

• Social computing began in the 1970s (pre-internet)– Computers could be networked– Computing became affordable

1970s — Pre-Internet• 1971 - First e-mail sent • Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES)

– Created by Murray Turoff– First “Groupware” software

(e.g., to deliver courses, conferencing sessions, facilitate research)– Forerunner of Bulletin Board System (BBS)– Used for 1 or more reasons:

• Group cannot meet in person• Anonymity needs to be preserved• Group is too large• Group is too diverse (interdisciplinary)• One-on-one communication is too slow• Group members tend to disagree

• 1979 – First online BBS

1980s — Non-Internet based Pre-Web• BBSes [computer Bulletin Board Systems]

– Person to person mail– Message boards– Games– Files exchanges

• FidoNet– Phone based network of BBSes

• each BBS was called a Node– Global message boards– Global person to person mail

1980s — Internet-based Pre-Web• E-mail and mailing lists• Usenet (newsgroups)• Chat rooms (IRC, AOL, Compuserve)• MUDs [multi-user domains]• MUSHes [multi-user shared hacks] often used for social

gaming

1990s — WWW 1.0• 1991 – WWW made available to the public• Web Pages

– Often static, information based– Homepages

• At academic institutions– Geocities

• Personal web pages• Early Social Networking Sites

– TheGlobe.com• Allows personalization, content publishing & interaction with other

users– Classmates.com

• Networks of classmates– Sixdegrees.com

• Networks of friends– Basic Web Logs (Blogs)

• Allowed people to put content on-line• No comments or linking (one-way)

1990s — WWW 1.0• First IM system created by ICQ

– Purchased later by AOL

• Organizations provided content– Britannica– Newspapers– mp3.com– Akamai (content distribution)– Content management systems

• Users were passive• Web content is mostly static• P2P explodes on the scene

– Napster

2000s - Web 2.0• Web content user user-driven and dynamic• Interactive sharing of information, collaboration• Community rather than organization derived• Updates are faster and more frequent• Less dependable?• More Saturated?

Web 1.0 Web 2.0

Akamai BitTorrent

mp3.com Napster

Britannica Online Wikipedia

personal websites blogging

content management systems wikis

directories (taxonomy) tagging ("folksonomy")

Is this the end?

• Usage seems to be plateauing• What's next?

2000s — Web 2.0• 2002 – Friendster• 2003 – MySpace, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Photobucket• 2004 – Facebook, Digg, Flickr• 2005 – YouTube, Reddit• 2006 – Twitter• 2007 – iPhone, Tumblr• 2008 – Groupon

– Facebook overtakes MySpace as #1 Social Network• 2011

– Facebook surpasses 600 million active users– iPhone iOS5 is integrated with Twitter– Google+

• Launched in June, over 10 million users sharing 1 billion items per day– Diaspora