Digital Living and Social Networks

Alessio Malizia, Prof., PhD,Computer Engineering Dep.University Carlos III of Madrid, Spainamalizia@inf.uc3m.esdei.inf.uc3m.es

dei@uc3m.es

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Madrid

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Informatics at UC3M• The degree in Informatics Engineering of Universidad Carlos III of Madrid has the

following principal distinctive features: ▫ 4-year education, taking 240 credits. Internationalization, as it is a degree that is adapted to

the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). ▫ Possibility of choosing English/Spanish bilingual education. New teaching methods adapted

to the EHEA that include ongoing evaluation, group work, etc., to quantify all the student’s work, not just that in the classroom. 

▫ Large practical component, as at least 40% of total credit weight is dedicated to tutored laboratory practicum. 

▫ Existence of teaching resources adjusted to the number of students, with classrooms and laboratories where a computer per student is available in many cases. 

▫ Possibility of carrying out in-company internships. Possibility of studying in Europe through Erasmus exchanges. There are currently agreements with a number of universities.

▫  Outstanding dedication of the teaching faculty who are highly experienced and are in constant contact with the student.

• All these features have enabled Informatics Engineering at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid to hold second place in the NATIONAL ranking of degrees published in "El Mundo" newspaper in May 2008, and the employability of these graduates is 100%, just as soon as they finish their studies and even before.

DEI Lab @ UC3m

dei.inf.uc3m.esdei@uc3m.es

•Web applications•Information access•Interactive systems

Outline•Digital Living •Social Networks as

▫Science▫Technology▫Popular Culture

•Developing for Cooperation▫Tagging▫Mash-ups

•Conclusions

EntertainmentCommunicatio

n & Collaboration

Daily Life

Working andLearning

Evolution of Digital Living

e-mailwebsite

e-commercetools

e-businesstools

environmentfor network

digitalecosystems

DigitalInteraction

living

Extent of economical impact, organizational change and sophistication*

Internal/ExternalCommunications

Visibility and diffusion of information

On-line market and paymentsMaximize accessibility to global markets

Supply ChainsValue-chain integrationReduction of distribution costs

OutsourcingVirtual Enterprises

CrowdsourcingKnowledge sharingWeb Services and Solutions

People, community, SocietyErgonomyContent ManagementDigital Rights ManagementManagement of Change

Focus switch

Technology

Computers

Supercomputers

Programming Optimization

Applications and Services

People

Mobile Devices

Usability, Universal Access

DIGITAL INTERACTION

Perspective on UsersUser

Customer

Producer or Consumer

Stand Alone

Participant

Designer

Producer and Consumer

Interconnected

User Participant

Perspective on UsersUser

Customer

Producer or Consumer

Stand Alone

Participant

Designer

Producer and Consumer

Interconnected

Audience Designer

Perspective on UsersUser

Customer

Producer or Consumer

Stand Alone

Participant

Designer

Producer and Consumer

Interconnected

Consumer and Producer

Consumer and Producer

Perspective on UsersUser

Customer

Producer or Consumer

Stand Alone

Participant

Designer

Producer and Consumer

Interconnected

Stand alone Interconnected

Outline•Digital Living •Social Networks as

▫Science▫Technology▫Popular Culture

•Developing for Cooperation▫Tagging▫Mash-ups

•Conclusions

Social Networks

social networks as science•Social network analysis is an

interdisciplinary social science, but has been of special concern to sociologists.

•Recently, physicists and mathematicians have made large contributions to understanding networks in general (as graphs) and thus contributed to an understanding of social networks too.

social networks as science• [Social network analysis] is grounded in the

observation that social actors [i.e., people] are interdependent and that the links [i.e., relationships] among them have important consequences for every individual [and for all of the individuals together]. ... [Relationships] provide individuals with opportunities and, at the same time, potential constraints on their behavior. ... Social network analysis involves theorizing, model building and empirical research focused on uncovering the patterning of links among actors. It is concerned also with uncovering the antecedents and consequences of recurrent patterns. (from Linton C. Freeman)

social networks as science•A and B are “structurally

equivalent” because they connect to the same people and thus have equivalent positions in the network.

B

A

social networks as scienceCentrality is computed from the number of

direct connections between nodes.

Diane is central (6/9);Jane is not (1/9).

orgnet.com/sna.html

social networks as science• if you’re a boy in this

network (a triangle) • and you want to meet a

girl (a circle), • who are you going to call

for an introduction?

Bridge

social networks as technology•email, newsgroups, and weblogs.

•In the design of the arpanet (the forerunner to the internet) email was an afterthought!

social networks as technology•search engines: e.g., Google (www.google.com)

▫Google’s Page Rank algorithm gives more weight to popular webpages.

▫A webpage is considered popular if many other webpages link to it.

•collaborative filtering and/or recommender systems; e.g., amazon.com’s feature: “People who bought this book also bought...”

•Amazon Mechanical Turk▫Artificial Artificial Intelligence

social networks as technology

http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/blog/?cat=5

social networks as popular culture

social networks as popular culture• e.g., six degrees of kevin bacon• bacon number: definition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon▫kevin bacon has a bacon number of 0▫an actor, A, has a bacon number of 1 if s/he

appeared in a movie with kevin bacon▫an actor, B, has a bacon number of 2 if s/he

appear in a movie with A▫etc.

•Try it at http://oracleofbacon.org/

social networks as popular culture• Social software; e.g., facebook, friendster, orkut,

tribe, etc.• Recall the article by danah boyd: what happens to

social networks when they are explicitly declared?▫“[danah] emphasize[s] how users have repurposed

the technology to present their identity and connect in personally meaningful ways while the architect works to define and regulate acceptable models of use.”

• To understand “artificial” social networks we need to rethink the social scientific concepts of “equivalence,” “centrality,” even “node” and “link.”

Outline•Digital Living •Social Networks as

▫Science▫Technology▫Popular Culture

•Developing for Cooperation▫Tagging▫Mash-ups

•Conclusions

Developing for Cooperation

By Gerhard Fisher

Collaborative Tagging and Folksonomies•“Collaborative tagging” is used to

describe the process by which people create and share their metadata tags

•“Folksonomies” refers to the actual output, or the tags themselves.

Folksonomies• Folksonomies (known also as “social classifications”) are

user created metadata.

• They are a grassroots community classification of digital assets.

• The term “folksonomy” was created by Thomas Vander Val and represents a merging of the terms “folk” and “taxonomy.”

• One form of explicit user created metadata was popularized in the late 1990s with link-focused websites called weblogs

Where are folksonomies found?• Folksonomies are found in social bookmarks managers such as

Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) and Furl (http://www.furl.net/), which allow users to:▫ Add bookmarks of sites they like to their personal collections of links▫ Organize and categorize these sites by adding their own terms, or

tags ▫ Share this collection with other people with the same interests.

• The tags are used to collocate bookmarks: ▫ (a) within a user’s collection; and ▫ (b) across the entire system, e.g., the page http://del.icio.us/tag/blogging

will show all bookmarks that are tagged with “blogging” by any user.

• There are no clearly defined relations between and among the terms in the vocabulary, unlike formal taxonomies and classification schemes

Popular folksonomy sites•Del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us)•Flickr (http://www.flickr.com)•Frassle (http://www.frassle.org)•Furl (http://www.furl.net)•Simpy (http://www.simpy.com)•Spurl (http://www.spurl.com)•Technorati (http://www.technorati.com)

Web Mashups•Mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services.

Web Tools for Mashups

An example (eStorys)

Tools for Mashups•Different tools to create mashups

▫Yahoo Pipes▫Microsoft PopFly▫Google Mashups (deprecated from January

2009)▫Marmite▫Karma▫IBM’s QEDWiki▫JackBe▫Dojo

Conclusions•Digital Living is for people not for Users

▫Ubiquitous▫Tangible▫Integration

•New models for design and participation•Tools for end-users development•Web 3.0 vs Web 2.0