The. Perks.Of.Being.A.Wallflower

After a lot of brain storming and exploring the web for an idea for the blog, I threw my hands up in the air and started watching this movie “The. Perks.Of.Being.A.Wallflower” which undoubtedly is a beautiful movie, but what struck me was the portrayal of a misfit/an introvert by the protagonist and how he develops a network of friends PAUSE rest you can watch for yourself  J

The character of the protagonist is what gave me an idea to look for how a social network in general and in organizations gets weaved for or woven by an introvert.

There are lots of thought provoking articles on our beloved search engine that discuss ideas ranging from hiring an introvert, creating personal brands for introverts,  to whether introverts are better leaders than their arch rivals extroverts.

I couldn't help myself from posting two engaging articles in this post.

Below is the one which talks about out the flawed representation of engagement by social media channels. The whole program underneath these channels works out to capture where all the bees are swarming and not why. When the whole world is going gaga about communication and socialization, there are exceptional few who ponder over the real purpose behind this kind of behavior.

http://channelandplace.com/2013/10/28/engaging-introverts-in-social-media-four-strategies-that-skirt-extrovert-bias/

And fewer who are exploiting the benefits of online engagement technologies to reveal the true talents within the organization. It is interesting to note that how corporations/organizations are embracing the networking technologies to extract the most influential ideas out of the introverts, who wouldn't have spoken up if it was done in a traditional manner of face to face communication.

http://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/ANowDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=51335

Leaving  you with stimulated grey cells ;)

Vyoma  Tomer  [M14]

Will we lose our privacy on the Internet to governments AND companies?

(Posted on behalf of Maximilian Weber)

There is one company called Palantir which is building "software that allows organizations to make sense of massive amounts of disparate data". Founded in 2003/2004 by Standford graduates and PayPal alumni in order to fight terrorism and cybercrime, the company was initially backed with USD 2 million by In-Q-Tel (the CIA's venture capital fund) and is already valued at USD 8 billion, just 10 years after starting the business. With the overall goal to "enable people to ask the questions they need answered in a language they understand", the company “sells a powerful line of data-mining and analysis software that maps out human social networks for counter-intelligence purposes” (please see http://www.palantir.com/what-we-do/).

By doing so, Palantir’s service and software is of great interest for CIA, the FBI, the U.S. Special Operations Command, the Army, Marines and Air Force, as well as the police departments of New York and Los Angeles. In order to understand their high interaction with the government organizations in the U.S, especially in connection with the current NSA discussions, please feel free to read http://timshorrock.com/?p=1811. By taking a closer look at the company and its growth prospects, data mining and analysis seems to evolve to a huge industry and interest field for large corporations like JPMorgan Chase and News Corp as well (http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/08/16/cia-funded-data-miner-palantir-not-yet-profitable-but-looking-for-8-billion-valuation/).

And this is actually the scary part of this. With companies growing that fast, setting up that much of knowledge and saving that much information about the users of the Internet, it can be assured that this data will also be shared/sold to corporations and more parties of interest. Therefore: a) should we be afraid that we are not just monitored by the governments, but also by large corporations as well? b) Will our privacy on the Internet disappear in the next years? What is your opinion?

What Is The Future of Social Media?

We are "struggling"..ah, no I mean "studying" the Social Network Analysis course and I am sure that some of you are busy preparing for the debate on Monday; so I guess something about the social media in the future can give us some useful ideas about how our social life will be in the coming years.

The below video will help you imagine about the future of social media by introducing about the current development of social media and giving you ideas about how it is in the future.
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The future? 

The nature of human being is curiosity. We are curious about others (maybe that's the reason why social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. have a huge chance to develop fast and robustly;)). We are curious about the world and new things happening everyday. Especially, most of us are curious about future (that's why there are a lot of fortune-tellers ;))).

So what will the future be? How will the life be in 10 years, 20 years or even 100 years? Let's look at the past to see once more how our way of communicating has changed, particularly in the era of technology.

Let's think about 15 years ago? In 1999, what did we do at weekends? You could go out, chatting with your friends, go fishing, shopping or travel around. How did you contact with your family and friends? Maybe through fixed telephone network. Maybe letter. At that time, if you had a mobile phone, I guess you must be...fabulous. A mobile phone which is as big as a brick may have been called .."a smartphone".

So how is our life now? What will you do at weekends? (Of course, Social Network Analysis of Prof.Tunnard ;)), but I did not mean it :)). We still chat with our friends, but of course via Facebook, Skype, and Twitter. We still shop but through Amazon and Ebay. We even still go fishing but with... the games on your smartphone. We still "travel" and "see" what people do, but through Youtube and Instagram.

That explains why the way we connect and communicate will be very different in the future. With the development of technology, the communication among people promises to change a lot in 15 years. So first, let's start with some images about the future of social media by pressing "Play" button of the below video, and "free" your imagination ;).

Wish you all happy weekends with little worry about the debate on Monday :)

Victoria (Quynh Trang Bui - M14)

Social Networking between China and the world

Have you noticed there are several articles on China in the “SNO course library”, “Article”folder which Prof. Tunnard provided? China is always a big topic, by all kinds of reasonsJ.

Everyone is familiar with Amazon, how about Alibaba in China? Alibaba is the biggest competitor of Amazon in China and maybe later in the international market, and it’s going public. Alibaba has made a lot of miracles in Chinese market, but definitely it will face huge challenges in the oversea market, one reason, you can image, is the Chinese Website unblock policy. (read more in the article: Alibaba The world's greatest bazaar)

You may not find many Chinese friends on your Facebook or Twitter, as these websites were blocked since 2009, instead, similar social networks in China as Sina Weibo, WeChat have quite larger customers base. You can quickly have a look at the rankings of customers last year(Oct. 30, 2013) or find the article here: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-largest-social-networks-2013-12

  Facebook (1.15 billion MAUs)

  YouTube (1 billion MAUs)

  Qzone (712 million total users), China

  Sina Weibo (500 million total users), China

  WhatsApp (350 million MAUs)

  Google+ (327 million MAUs)

  Tumblr (300 million monthly unique visitors)

  LINE (275 million total active users), Japan

  Twitter (240 million MAUs)

  WeChat (236 million MAUs), China

The good thing is that there will be a free trade zone in Shanghai to unblock these websites, to make foreigners ”feel like at home”, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once said making Facebook available in China is keeping in with his company’s goal of connecting the world.  Let’s expecting it! 

(read article here:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/24/us-china-facebook-idUSBRE98N04020130924 )

Guoying Wang (M14)  HHL

Social Networks in the Music Industry

Anyone with a keen interest in music can produce their own these days. Whether you have a basic sense of rhythm or not, you too can reel out bars of endless noise and/or melody with music apps like Adobe Audition, Garageband, Cakewalk Pro Audio and others.

Platforms such as myspace and soundcloud provide budding musicians with opportunities to showcase their work, both of covers and original pieces. Now put yourself in the shoes of a talent scout for a major media label. Sifting through all the content in cyberspace presents a challenge in finding the right talent to promote. This is often hindered by the fact that musicians and fans are networked heavily amongst each other so popularity is not necessarily a safe factor to go by.

This article http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/do-social-networks-really-help-musicians.html discusses the implications of this conundrum and describes what one particular media label (A&R) is doing to find and promote talent efficiently. It provides some very useful insights for musicians to take into account when networking to bring exposure to their work.

Although the article is an interesting exercise in the use of social networks, it does not tackle the reality of music publishing where central labels are increasingly being done away with. Musicians are increasingly establishing themselves on an independent level directly with their fan base. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for the individual Joe/Josephine in the street to still find new music that they can connect to. For an outline of the way music distribution is developing see this previous blog entry here http://crtunnard.blogspot.de/2012/12/how-social-media-has-revolutionized.html.

Mal

Spoilers! or Does the Mousetrap still work in the age of Social Networks?

Agatha Christie’s famous play continues to enjoy its record breaking run of 62 years (and counting) in London’s West End partially because of the now mythical request the cast puts to the audience after every performance: "Please keep the Whodunnit a secret". Of course you can find out who done it by reading the story or listening to the audioplay but most will be able to enjoy the play without knowing that the murderer of course is… (Ha! Had you there J )

Now, how does something like this work in social media – you can’t control it, right? If we’re looking at TV series or movies, with different air dates around the world but one internet it is easy to spoil the fun for others. This is particularly true for pre-screenings where TV networks and film distributors have to walk the fine line of promoting their product but also guarding against secrets being disseminated and stopping people from watching. I still hold a grudge against Spiegel Online for spoiling John Harrison's true identity (Trekkies know what I'm on about).

The linked article describes the ingenious way in which the BBC approached this task before Doctor Who’s 7^th season. I hope that you may find it interesting, it describes what I (and the author) think is a pretty smart way of using social networks for marketing without spoilers. It also has Doctor Who in it. What is not to love about that?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2012/08/25/trusting-social-media-and-the-asylum-of-doctor-who-fans/

HHL’s resident Whovian

Helen (M14)

Enjoying Professor’s Tunnard’s class? 

Worried about the debate on Monday? 

Like George Orwell?

Read “The Circle,” by Dave Eggers (Oct., 2013), and read it now. Imagine if Prof. Tunnard’s “headlines” from 2022 actually happened. What if one social network ascended to such a prominent role in the global society, that it actually began to define that society.?

That’s what the Circle is about. It’s a dystopian novel of how social network domination could happen, and what it would look like. The story follows a new hire at “The Circle” (a firm based in Silicon Valley, of course), and how her understanding of her role and her company’s role in the world changes as she advances in the company.

There’s person-cams. There’s drones. There’s free lunch. And there’s some great slogans like "sharing is caring," "secrets are lies," and "privacy is theft."

This book will definitely help those who are picked for the “social networks WILL drive companies”-side of the debate, and it brings up a lot of relevant concerns to what that would mean.

http://www.amazon.de/The-Circle-Dave-Eggers/dp/0385351399/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389270107&sr=8-1&keywords=dave+eggers

Enjoy!

Procrastination and Multitasking

While I am in class, I wonder whether being on facebook and twitter at the same time will influence my acedemic performance. Actually, one of my new years' resolutions is to be LESS involved with multitasking (listening, taking notes, communicating on facebook, texting, emailing etc) during class and be present not only physically. I try to turn off my laptop, put away my phone (while continuously catching myself reaching into my bag to see whether theres a message....I think people know what I am talking about) while I am in class. However, for SNA it's really tempting to want to do exactly what I think is impairing with my goal to turn everything off, and yes, I am still listening to Prof. Tunnard right now.

So, I was interested whether there are any studies out there and I found one and here it is:
http://www.academia.edu/1810511/Negative_impact_of_social_networking_sites_on_academic_performance_of_students

It seems that the resulting procrastination deriving from dozing off via social networks has an overall impact on academic performance in the long run.

Take a look at it for yourself and enjoy!

Isabell (HHL M14)

Here's the #hhlp9 network, one day later. Need to get more people tweeting the hashtag so it will be picked up

here's yesterdays image--the first one. Not bad or a start

Need Social Network Analysis mapping tools for German SM sites

Has anyone found tools to do network maps of Xing and Studivz?

HHL is Tweeting

The P9 class is helping me do a social network analysis experiment. If you want to join in, just tweet using the hashtag #hhlP9.

Data visualization of Wikipedia edits

This isn't exactly social network analysis, but I thought our class of data visualizers might appreciate this: http://listen.hatnote.com/#nowelcomes,en

Network Analysis Showing Increasing Polarization of American Congress

I came across a very interesting article with a set of network maps of the 101st (1989 session), 107th (2002) and 113th (2013) Congresses. From the article published in the Economist:

"The network maps shown here look at the degree to which senators vote the same way. Each node is a senator. Links represent instances when senators have voted similarly on substantive legislation on at least 100 occasions during the same congressional session. Their placement is determined algorithmically, based on their co-operation with other legislators—which has the effect of pushing more bipartisan ones to the centre."

The conclusion of the analysis, done by a computer science undergrad at Harvard, is not surprising; Congress and American policymaking has become much more polarized over the past two decades.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21591190-united-states-amoeba

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/12/daily-chart

"How Ukrainian protestors are using Twitter and Facebook"

 Pablo Barberá and Megan Metzger, graduate researchers in the NYU Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) laboratory, report on the use of social media by Ukrainian protestors. 

"Taken together, our data suggests that Ukrainian social media users are strategically using the tools available to them in the ways that seem most effective. The disparity in language use between Facebook and Twitter suggests an understanding on the part of users about the audiences consuming the content they produce in each medium. The spike in Twitter use is, to our knowledge, a previously unobserved phenomenon. It suggests a reciprocal relationship between social media and protest, where social media can serve as an important strategic tool for protest, and at the same time attract new users to online communication platforms."

Facebook activity on public pages related to Ukrainian protests [Data: NYU Social Media and Political Participation (smapp.nyu.edu) lab; Figure: Pablo Barberá and Megan Metzger]

Ukrainian protests tweets by language [Data: NYU Social Media and Political Participation (smapp.nyu.edu) lab; Figure: Pablo Barberá and Megan Metzger]

Ukrainian protests and creation of new twitter accounts[Data: NYU Social Media and Political Participation (smapp.nyu.edu) lab; Figure: Pablo Barberá and Megan Metzger]

Is the U.S. Isolated mid-(Asia) Pivot? Network Showing Countries' TPP Negotiation Positions

"Political scientists often talk about dyads, by which we simply mean groups of two. In this case, a dyad refers to a pair of TPP countries. If we count up every instance that the United States appears in the same marker as, say, Australia, we can say that the U.S.-Australia dyad occurs with a certain frequency. If we did this for every possible dyad, we could compare the frequency of dyads and get a sense of how often countries’ negotiating positions overlap. The following chart displays the frequency of every possible dyad among the 12 TPP countries. For example, the U.S.-Australia dyad (AU-US) appears 83 times in the leaked text, and is the 43rd most frequent dyad. Note that the order doesn’t matter: a U.S.-Australia dyad is the same as an Australia-U.S. dyad."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2013/11/18/the-united-states-is-isolated-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership-negotiations/

Social Networks as a predictor for criminal behavior in Chicago

Chicago PD using SNA for murder forecasting

While Yale sociologists find social networks in victims of fatal shootings, the Chicago PD takes SNA in order to predict a "heat list"of likely shooters to reach out to. Fascinating and a bit troubling.

Social Networks Critical to Understanding the Spread of Obesity

Health professionals in this study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, conducted a social network analysis to see how person-to-person networks contribute to the obesity epidemic. Their conclusion was not very surprising: network phenomena is quite relevant to this epidemic and its spread depends on the social ties. 

http://humannaturelab.net/wp-content/themes/human-nature-lab/media/pdf/publications/articles/078.pdf

OK, this is stretching the definition of network, but...

This will reaffirm your confidence in the American educational system--or at least amaze you.

Researchers Draw Romantic Insights From Maps of Facebook Networks By STEVE LOHR

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/spotting-romantic-relationships-on-facebook/?smid=pl-share

NYT upgrades its API for info on Congress

If you know what the title means, and you want to do SNA work on the U.S. Congress, you'll be excited. Yes, it's tech-speak, but the good news is that there is a lot more data not just available but easily downloadable. Have a read, then find a friend who understands how to do this. There are more around school than you might think.