social networking and collaboration tools for enterprise 2.0

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Copyright 2005 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved. www.deri.org Social Networking and Collaboration Tools for Enterprise 2.0 John Breslin [email protected] http:// www.johnbreslin.com/ Enriching the Internet Experience 18 th October 2007

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The Fidelity Investments, TerraNua and ITAG Conference on Enriching the Internet Experience / The Ardilaun, Galway / 18th October 2007

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Page 1: Social Networking and Collaboration Tools for Enterprise 2.0

Copyright 2005 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

www.deri.org

Social Networking and Collaboration Tools for Enterprise 2.0

John Breslin

[email protected]://www.johnbreslin.com/

Enriching the Internet Experience18th October 2007

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A little bit about myself!

1998: Forum* on the Irish Games Network

1998: Forum* on the Irish Games Network

2000: boards.ieLtd. Formed

2000: boards.ieLtd. Formed

2004: Researcherat DERI, NUI Galway

2004: Researcherat DERI, NUI Galway

2008: 10th

Anniversary*

2008: 10th

Anniversary*

Hello, World!Hello, World! 1990: VMSMAP.COM

1990: VMSMAP.COM

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What I’m going to talk about today…

1. Collaborating with Social Media and Web 2.0

2. Social Networking Services (SNSs) So Far

3. Enterprise Social Networking Services

4. The Future of Social Networking Services

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Copyright 2005 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

www.deri.org

1. Collaborating with Social Media and Web 2.0

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A move from the Web to a “social web”

The New Yorker, 1993

“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

The New Yorker, 2005

“I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just

pointless, incessant barking.”

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What is social media?

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media– “Social media uses the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to connect

information in a collaborative manner.”– “Social media can take many different forms, including message

boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video.”

• Popular examples of social media sites:– Wikipedia, MySpace / Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SecondLife,

Upcoming, Digg / Reddit / StumbleUpon, Flickr / Zooomr, del.icio.us, World of Warcraft, Amazon

• Related terms:– Web 2.0, social web, social software, social networks, social

news, social bookmarking, user-generated content

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What is Web 2.0?

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0– “Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web-based

communities and hosted services - such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies - which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.”

• The term Web 2.0 was made popular by Tim O’Reilly:– http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/

what-is-web-20.html

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Features / principles of Web 2.0 (O’Reilly)

1. The Web as platform

2. Harnessing collective intelligence

3. Data is the next “Intel Inside”

4. End of the software release cycle

5. Lightweight programming models

6. Software above the level of a single device

7. Rich user experiences+ The long tail

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Web 2.0 and social media in my simple terms

1. Users

2. Content

3. Tags

4. Comments– Users post content

– Users share content– Users annotate content with tags

– Users browse content via tags– Users discuss content via comments

– Users connect via posted content– Users connect directly to users

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Content can be…

• Books Amazon• Discussion postings Blogs• Bookmarks del.icio.us• Photos Flickr• Music Last.fm• Movies Netflix• Events Upcoming.org• Places Dopplr• Products Microsoft Aura• Articles Wikipedia

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Blogging: a phenomenon for a new generation?

• Cincinnati Enquirer, October 2004

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Overview of blogs

• Weblog, web log or simply a blog is a web journal• “A web application which contains periodic time-stamped

posts on a common (usually open-access) webpage”• Individual diaries -> arms of political campaigns, media

programs and corporations (e.g. the Google Blog)• Citizen journalism…• Posts are often shown in reverse chronological order• Comments can be made by the public on some blogs• Latest headlines, with hyperlinks and summaries, are

syndicated using RSS or Atom formats (e.g. for reading favourite blogs with a feed reader)

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The state of the blogosphere from Technorati

• 70 million blogs• The blogosphere is doubling in size every

320 days (slowing down a little)• 120,000 new blogs are created each day

(i.e. 1.4 new blogs every second)• 1.5 million blog posts are made in a day

(i.e. 17 posts per second)• Around 5-10% of new blogs are spam

blogs or “splogs”• 35% of blog posts use tags

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Definition of wikis

• A wiki is a type of website that allow users to easily add and edit content and is especially suited for collaborative writing

• The name is based on the Hawaiian term wiki-wiki, meaning “quick”, “fast”, or “to hasten”

• It amasses to a group of web pages that allows users to quickly add content and also allows others to edit the content:– It relies on cooperation, checks and balances of its members,

and a belief in sharing of ideas

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Some uses of wikis

• Wikis are being used for:

– online encyclopaedias– free dictionaries– book repositories– software development– project proposals– writing research papers– event organisation

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The Wikipedia: from Gaeilge to Esperanto

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Typical wiki page

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Flickr, share your photos

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SlideShare for presentations

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The social bookmarking service del.icio.us

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All Consuming, what have you read today?

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Upcoming event listings and meetups

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Dopplr for managing travel, tracking friends abroad

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You can even share your favourite walks…

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…and find others with like musical interests

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TouristR for travel destination stories and info

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The machine is us/ing us

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

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Copyright 2005 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

www.deri.org

2. Social Networking Services (SNSs) So Far

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We all live in a social network…

• …of friends, family, workmates, fellow students, acquaintances, etc.

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• Friend of a friend, or “dúirt bean liom go ndúirt bean leí”

• Theory that anybody is connected to everybody else (on average) by no more than six degrees of separation

Everyone’s connected…

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Milgram’s six degrees of separation theory

• Sociologist Milgram conducted this experiment:– Random people from

Nebraska were to send a letter (via intermediaries) to a stock broker in Boston

– Could only send to someone with whom they were on a first-name basis

• Among the letters that found the target, the average number of links was six

Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)

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And now a major motion picture, kind of…

Six Degrees of Separation (1993)– “I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of the United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names... It’s not just big names — it’s anyone. A native in a rain forest, a Tiero del Fuegan, an Eskimo. I am bound — you are bound — to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people.”

– Play from 1990 by John Guare

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The Erdős number

• Number of links required to connect scholars to Erdős via co-authorship of papers

• Erdős wrote 1500+ papers with 507 co-authors

• Jerry Grossman’s site allows mathematicians to compute their Erdős numbers:– http://www.oakland.edu/enp/

• Connecting path lengths, among mathematicians only:– The average is 4.65

– The maximum is 13

Paul Erdős (1913-1996)

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Trying to make friends

ValdisLatvia

UldisDERI

John Marc

Dublin

Clare BrosJohn C Andrew

Met

Marc and I already had friends in common!

I later found out my cousin Ailish also knows Andrew.

The “small world” phenomenon…

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“It’s a small world after all!”, by Kentaro Toyama

Kentaro

Bash

Karishma

Sharad

Maithreyi

Anandan

Venkie

Soumya

Prof. McDermott

Ranjeet

Prof. Sastry

PM Manmohan Singh

Prof. Balki

Pres. Kalam

Prof. Jhunjhunwala

Dr. Montek SinghAhluwalia

Ravi

Dr. Isher Judge Ahluwalia

Pawan

Aishwarya

Ravi’sFather

AmitabhBachchan

Prof.Kannan

Prof. Prahalad

NandanaSen

Prof. AmartyaSen

Prof. Veni

* Source: http://research.microsoft.com/toyama/talks/

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The Kevin Bacon game

Boxed version of the game• Invented by three Albright College students in 1994:– Craig Fass, Brian Turtle, Mike

Ginelly

• Goal is to connect any actor to Kevin Bacon, by linking actors who have acted in the same movie

• The “Oracle of Bacon” website uses IMDB to find the shortest link between any two actors:– http://oracleofbacon.org/

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The Kevin Bacon game (2)

• Total number of actors in database (as of 15th October):– 893283

• Average path length to Kevin:– 2.957

• Actor closest to “center”:– Rod Steiger (2.68)

• Rank of Kevin, in terms of closeness to center:– 1049th

• Most actors are within three links of each other!

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What are social networking services (SNSs)?

• From the beginning, the Internet was a medium for connecting not only machines but people

• Idea behind SNSs is to make the aforementioned real-world relationships explicitly defined online

• 2002:– Friendster

• 2003:– MySpace, LinkedIn, hi5

• 2004:– orkut, Facebook

• 2005:– Bebo

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Social networking in plain English

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc

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The popularity of SNSs

• The 10 most popular domains ~= 40% percent of all page views on the Web (Compete, November 2006)– Nearly half of those views

were from the social networking services MySpace and Facebook – wow!

– And that’s just in the top 10…

Alexa rankings:

#6: MySpace

#7: orkut

#8: Facebook

#10: hi5

#16: Friendster

#95: Bebo

#142: LinkedIn

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SNSs attracting lots of monetary / media attention

• Friendster – $13M VC• Tribe – $6.3M VC• LinkedIn – $4.7M VC• Bebo – $15M VC• MySpace – Sold for $580M• Friends Reunited – Sold for £120M• Facebook – Purported $1B Y! offer

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Motivation for social network services

• Allows a user to create and maintain an online network of close friends or business associates for social and professional reasons:– Friendships and relationships– Offline meetings– Curiosity about others– Business opportunities– Job hunting

…– For social good:

• Kevin Bacon – sixdegrees.org

• Sun – openeco.org

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Big social network services (in terms of accounts)

• myspace.com 200,000,000• spaces.live.com 120,000,000• orkut.com 68,000,000• hi5.com 50,000,000• friendster.com 50,000,000• xanga.com 40,000,000• classmates.com 40,000,000• facebook.com 39,000,000• bebo.com 34,000,000• tagged.com 30,000,000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

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Features of social network services

• Network of friends (inner circle)• Person surfing• Private messaging• Discussion forums• Events management• Blogging and commenting• Media uploading

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Facebook, #8 in the world

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The success of (and hype around) Facebook

• After talks with MS to take 5% stake, estimated at $10B• 4,000 applications have been created for Facebook’s

developer interface:– 70,000 developers signed up

• Active user count has jumped 70% in the four months since this contributable application layer was added

• 50% of Facebook users are non-students:– People over 24 are its fastest-growing demographic

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orkut, Google’s SNS

• TechCrunch - Google To “Out Open” FB On November 5– www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/21/google-to-out-open-facebook-

on-november-5/

• Scobleizer - Google: Making Big Social Media Moves– scobleizer.com/2007/10/09/google-making-big-social-media-

moves/

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Get LinkedIn to business contacts, 15 million users

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OpenEco, a SNS for managing GHG emissions

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Other niche SNSs

• Age:– Multiply (seniors and settled); Boomj (baby boomers); Rezoom

• Country of origin:– Silicon India

• Gender:– CaféMom; MothersClick; Sister Woman (female friends)

• Occupation:– ModelsHotel; FanLib (fiction writers); AdGabber; TheFeng.org (financial

services executives); MilitarySpot (military families); Sermo (doctors and physicians)

• Business and careers:– ConnectBuzz; Doostang; Execunet; Netshare; Ryze; Viadeo; Xing

• Interests:– TradeKing (investors); StreetCred (hip hop); IndiePublic (art and

design); PeerTrainer (health and wellbeing)

* Source: Paul Gibler, Wisconsin Technology Network

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Can be many links even in a small-sized SNSCan be many links even in a small-sized SNS

• Meaningless when viewed as a whole, so need to apply Meaningless when viewed as a whole, so need to apply some social network analysis (SNA) techniques:some social network analysis (SNA) techniques:– ““Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications”, Stanley Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications”, Stanley

Wasserman and Katherine FaustWasserman and Katherine Faust– http://www.socialnetworks.org/http://www.socialnetworks.org/– http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/tse-portal/analysis/social-network-analysis/http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/tse-portal/analysis/social-network-analysis/– http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/pajek/http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/pajek/

• For example, can reduce the amount of relevant social For example, can reduce the amount of relevant social network data by clusteringnetwork data by clustering

• May choose to cluster people by common friends, by May choose to cluster people by common friends, by shared interests, by geography, by tags, etc.shared interests, by geography, by tags, etc.

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What is social network analysis?

• People are represented as nodes or “actors”

• Relationships are represented as lines or edges:– Relationships may be

acquaintanceship, friendship, co-authorship, etc.

• Allows analysis using tools of mathematical graph theory, and mapping:– Movie actors

– Scientists and mathematicians

– Sexual interaction

– Phone call patterns

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Visualising your network of friends

• You can graphically visualise your network of

friends and friends-of-friends using graphical

tools (e.g. Prefuse)• This is the friends

network for “john b” (the ellipse in the center)

• Surrounding him are his friends and friends-of-

friends

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Network from social.ie

• http://www.swfup.com/uploads/swf-37675.swf

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Social network analysis in use

• Sociology theory applied to the 21st century, collecting data from social network websites:– http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2006/08/19/

research_on_soc.html

• Combine with Semantic Web technologies to determine social behavioural patterns:– http://www.blogninja.com/galway-iswc2005.ppt

• MIT Media Lab are conducting mobile SNA research via their “Reality Mining” project:– http://reality.media.mit.edu/

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Knowing too much?

• Individuals are revealing more and more information on SNS and other social software sites– Personal privacy issues, where sensitive information is revealed

• Advertisers and marketers can gain better understanding from customer behavioural patterns:– Analysing the masses of SNS info, “clouds” showing the overall

picture

• United States NSA using social network analysis technologies for homeland security– Also using “automated intelligence profiling” based on unreliable

information

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Copyright 2005 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

www.deri.org

3. Enterprise Social Networking Services

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Enterprise 2.0

• Web 2.0 includes applications such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds and social networking, while Enterprise 2.0 is the packaging of those technologies in both corporate IT and workplace environments

• “Enterprise 2.0 is the use of a freeform social software platform inside an organisation that allows them to do things that are important”, Harvard Business School’s Professor Andrew McAfee

• “There are direct enterprise equivalents [to Facebook]. You can ask people the status of their projects, what they’re working on, are they travelling, things they’ve learned. All of these things would be very valuable inside an enterprise.”

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Fears if employees are using external SNSs

• Chief information officers from large companies (e.g. financial institutions) block employee access to public social networks:– There is a fear of losing control of information in response to

the “open” ethos of the Internet; security issues– Accounting firms need to ensure their employees don’t

provide tax or financial advice online to comply with regulatory guidelines and disclosure legislation

• Requires safeguards in terms of tracking documents, discussions:– Awareness Inc.’s system tracks SNS posts and sends

potentially inflammatory posts into moderation boxes for manager review

– Need to comply with company, legal or state regulations

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Some negative aspects for SNSs and businesses

• Can sap employee productivity?• Potential violations / breaches of company protocol?• Forrester Research recently found that 14% of

companies have disciplined employees and 5% fired them for offences related to social networking

• A poll by Sophos found that 66% of workers think their colleagues share too much information on Facebook

• 50% of companies (including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, UBS, and Lehman Brothers) block access to Facebook according to the same Sophos survey

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Be careful what you post about

• “Jessica Zenner, an employee of Parker Services (a technical recruitment contractor for Nintendo) was fired on the 31st of August [2007] by her employer following concerns expressed by Nintendo about posts on her blog ‘Inexcusable Behavior’. […] The firing follows on from the recent dismissal of Paris-based Catherine Sanderson, AKA ‘La Petite Anglaise’, from accountancy firm Dixon Wilson for ‘gross misconduct’.” – SocialMedia.net

• “Bookseller Waterstone’s has sacked a long-serving employee for writing a blog. Joe Gordon from Edinburgh, who worked for the company for 11 years, says he was dismissed because he ‘brought the company into disrepute’ [in 2005].” – The Guardian

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What company opportunities are there from SNSs?

1. A useful means for self-promotion, marketing products online, and attracting new hires:– Can promote products or services through targeted advertising

and viral marketing– Get feedback (directly, indirectly) about your products or

services, especially from influential hubs / connectors– Discover new recruits; network with peers

2. An opportunity to create an internal network for sharing information and expertise:– Share information within a business’ own walls– Efficient way to mine for in-house expertise (“expert finding”)– Reduce the time spent mailing docs and e-mailing comments– Encourage employees, alumni, interns, new hires, retired staff,

other stakeholders to interact with each other

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The positives of SNSs for business employees

• “Bosses warm up to social networking on company time” – www.technewsworld.com/story/social-networking/59315.html

• “Corporate adoption of social networking tools, has been considerable due to their effectiveness in cutting across barriers in large corporations.”

• “Social networking has become a tool to drive corporate innovation.”

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The positives of SNSs for business employees (2)

• “More than 40 percent of business users consume social networking applications like blogs, intranets and RSS [really simple syndication] feeds more than three times a week.”

• “More than 30 percent of respondents read information in wikis, social networks, discussion boards and videoconferences / IMs more than three times a week.”

• “More than 20 percent of respondents contribute to blogs, intranets, social networks, discussion boards, video conferencing and tagging [social media sites] more than three times a week.”

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Quotes about blogging and business

• “It'll be no more mandatory that [CEOs] have blogs than that they have a phone and an e-mail account. If they don't, they're going to look foolish.” – Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems

• “Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We’ll find it anyway.” – Robert Scoble, Formerly of Microsoft, “Corporate Weblog Manifesto”

• “…controversy flared up in December, when a Portland, OR, company called Marqui announced that it would pay select bloggers $800 a month to publish at least four entries per month about its software. […] Nokia, for example, recently gave away Nokia 7710 wide-screen smart phones to more than 1,000 ‘VIPs’ around the world, including many bloggers…”http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_14587,258,p1.html

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Corporate social networking providers / platforms

• Mentor Scout

• Microsoft SharePoint

• SelectMinds

• Tacit Illumio

• Visible Path

• Web Crossing

• Awareness

• Contact Networks

• IBM Lotus Connections

• introNetworks

• Jive Software

• Leverage Software

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introNetworks

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Jive Software

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Visible Path

– Visible Path powers “Hoover’s Connect” for business research company Hoover's, which lets users know how they're connected to companies and people in the Hoover's database

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1. Search for those who work in venture capital

2. Target those people working at firms of interest

3. View profiles to see common friends that can get you a meeting with the VC of choice

• Try LinkedIn.com

• You have a business idea and are looking for an “in” at a venture capital firm:

Other business uses, e.g. finding venture capital

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Can an internal SNS become less “social”?

• Why not?• Evolution of boards.ie topics:

– 1998:• Games = 97%• Rec = 2%• Tech = 1%

– 2007:• Rec = 20%• Tech = 13%• Games = 11%• Soc = 9%• Biz = 8%• …

• And it doesn’t necessarily have to take 10 years!

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Biz

Sci

Music

Sys

Hosted

Region

Sports

Edu

Tech

Games

Rec

Soc

Arts

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Creating your own SNS

Which method is best for you?

1. Create a social network via a web interface, hosted on someone else’s site

2. Install off-the-shelf social networking software on your own server

3. Install a content management system and customise the SN modules / themes yourself

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Creating your own SNS (2)

• Ning.com:– From Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape– Hosted service

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Creating your own SNS (3)

• phpfox.com:– A downloadable relatively cheap solution called Konsort– Needs PHP, MySQL, etc.

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Creating your own SNS (4)

• http://groups.drupal.org/social-networking-sites:– Drupal is a popular content management system– Can add SN modules like buddylist, invite, organic groups, etc.

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Copyright 2005 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

www.deri.org

4. The Future of Social Networking Services

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Problems with SNSs

• Fundamental problems block their potential to access the full range of available content and networked people online

• There is a need to build semantic social networking into the fabric of the next-generation Internet itself:– Interconnecting both content and people in a meaningful way

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First issue

Need interesting objects to draw you back to keep on using social networking services

* Source: Jyri Engestrom, “Object-Centered Sociality”, Reboot 7

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Many social networking services can be boring…

* Source: Jyri Engestrom, “Object-Centered Sociality”, Reboot 7

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Object-centred sociality can provide meaning

• Users connected via a common object, e.g., their job, university, hobbies, a date…

• “Another tradition of theorizing offers an explanation of why Russell linked out, and why so many YASNS ultimately fail.”

• “According to this theory, people don’t just connect to each other. They connect through a shared object.”

* Source: Jyri Engestrom, “Why Some Social Networks Work…”

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Object-centred sociality can provide meaning (2)

• “When a service fails to offer the users a way to create new objects of sociality, they turn the connecting itself into an object [LinkedIn].”

• “Good services allow people to create social objects that add value.”– Flickr = photos– del.icio.us = bookmarks– Blogs = discussion posts

* Source: Jyri Engestrom, “Why Some Social Networks Work…”

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82…can connect us to other people

Everything we make and do…

• Video annotations• Chats• Photos• Micro-blogs• OSN profiles• Bookmarks

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Second issue

We all have too many separate profiles and sets of contacts on disconnected social networking services

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Social network portability and reusability

• Need distributed social networks and reusable profiles• Users may have many identities and sets of friends on

different social networks, where each identity was created from scratch

• Allow user to import existing profile and contacts, using a single global identity with different views (e.g., via FOAF, hCard, OpenID, etc.)

• See also:– http://groups.google.com/group/social-network-portability/– http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/– http://danbri.org/words/2007/09/13/194

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The Semantic Web can help

• Sir Tim Berners-Lee et al., Scientific American, 2001:– “An extension of the current web in which information is given

well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”

• The Semantic Web can provide the required representation mechanisms for connecting disparate social networks:– It links people and objects to store and represent the

heterogeneous ties that bind us to each other– Serves as a useful platform for linking and for performing

operations on diverse person- and object-related data gathered from heterogeneous social networking sites

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The Semantic Web can help (2)

• By using agreed-upon Semantic Web formats to describe people, content objects and the connections that bind them all together, SNSs can interoperate by appealing to common semantics

• Developers are already using Semantic Web technologies to augment the ways in which they create, reuse, and link profiles and content on social networking and media sites (using FOAF, SIOC, etc.)– Facebook to FOAF:

• www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~mrowe/foafgenerator.html• openlinksw.com/weblog/dav/dav-blog-1/index.vspx?id=1237

• In the other direction, object-centered social networks can serve as rich data sources for Semantic Web applications

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Friend-of-a-Friend (FOAF)

• FOAF is an ontology for describing people and the relationships that exist between them

• Can be integrated with any other SW vocabularies• Some SNSs with FOAF exports:

• People can also create their own FOAF document and link to it from their homepage

• FOAF documents usually contain personal info, links to friends, and other related resources

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Integrating social networks with FOAF

Common formats,unique URIs

* Source: Sheila Kinsella, Applications of Social Network Analysis 2007

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A distributed social network with FOAF

• Can use FOAF to describe social networks across a number of services

• Picture shows data from both boards.ie and my hand-coded FOAF file

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Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities

• The aims of the SIOC project (funded by SFI at DERI) are:– To fully describe the structure of content in online community sites– To create new connections between forums and posts from different

types of discussion systems (blogs, forums, mailing lists, etc.) and content items / containers on Web 2.0 sites

– To browse connected posts and channels in interesting ways (e.g., distributed linked conversations, decentralised discussion channels and communities, etc.)

• Some positive quotes:– “I […] think the concept is HOT” – Robert Douglass, Drupal Developer– “It just dawned on me that the burgeoning SIOC-o-sphere (online

communities exporting and exposing content via SIOC Ontology) is actually: Blogosphere 2.0” – Kingsley Idehen, Founder and CEO of OpenLink Software

– "SIOC has the potential to become one of the foundational vocabularies that make Semantic Web applications useful” – Ivan Herman, W3C

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How can SIOC data be used?

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1. SIOC metadata exporters have been created for open-source / commercial discussion systems and popular Web 2.0 sites:• b2evolution, Dotclear, Drupal, phpBB, WordPress, mailing lists, IRC,

Twitter, Jaiku, aggregators, OpenLink Data Spaces, etc.

2. Easy-to-use APIs have been produced for writing your own SIOC applications in PHP, Ruby on Rails and Java

3. As well as nearly 20 academic papers about SIOC and a W3C member submission (http://www.w3.org/Submission/2007/02/), easy-to-read documentation and usage examples are available:• http://sioc-project.org/

• SIOC aims to infect the Web infrastructure:– During next upgrade cycle gigabytes of community data

become available!

Getting traction for SIOC

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Where is SIOC being used already?

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Disconnected social media sites can connect using Semantic Web technology

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Social networking fatigue

• How many general or niche SNSs are you willing to register and / or interact with?

• People search engine and aggregation sites are now appearing:– SocialURL – organise your online identities– PeekYou – matching web pages with their owners– Spock – organising information around people– Rapleaf – reputation lookup and email search– Wink – free people search engine

• “There is potential for expanded social networks as potential matches are identified by such services.”

• Danger may occur if incorrect personal data is compiled and / or sold to others

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Social networking in 3-D

• SNS methods to simulate real-life social interaction:– People arrange to meet others through something they have in

common, not by randomly approaching each other– Better interaction methods with friends à la Second Life

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Questions and answers

?

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Interesting links and references

• The water cooler is now on the Webhttp://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_40/b4052072.htm

• The expanding world of social networkinghttp://wistechnology.com/article.php?id=4247

• Social networking: a time waster or the next big thing in collaboration?http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201808149

• Social networks may become interoperablehttp://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201808173

• Business faces up to social networkshttp://www.vnunet.com/computing/analysis/2200354/facebook-microsoft

• Harvard prof. envisions Enterprise 2.0 web serviceshttp://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid26_gci1276012,00.html

• Nine ways to build your own social networkhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/24/9-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/

• 34 more ways to build your own social networkhttp://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/14/34-more-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/

• Bosses warm up to social networking on company timehttp://www.technewsworld.com/story/social-networking/59315.html