Social Web 2.0Implications of Social Technologies for Digital Media

Shelly Farnham, Ph.D.Com 597 Winter 2007

Week 2

Agenda Introduction continued

Exploring social uses of technology

Overview of Communication Technologies

On the Social Uses of Technology

What are people’s social goals in using social software? Used to compensate for lack of face to face contact?

email friends from long distance; get a date; forge weak social ties with people with specialized knowledge;

Or, communication integrated with face to face contact?

Is social software good for you? For geeky losers who can’t get a date, addictive, like video games prevents people from developing real social connections

Kraut et al. (1998); Nie and Irbring (2000) Or, helps people keep in touch with family and friends, meet new

people?

How does what we know about the use of social software impact design?

Overview Communication Technologies

Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) User Goals:

Communicate, collaborate, socialize

At a distance Over time

Communication is mediated through technology Vary in degree of

Medial richness Interactivity

low high

Media Richness

In

tera

ctiv

ity

low

high

PhoneVideoPhone

FacetoFace

Text to Speech

ChatIM

Email

VoiceMail

Fax

Usenet

WhiteBoard

(Whittaker)

Social Presence Theory

How successfully media convey sense of others being physically present (also, Media Richness Theory)

Face-to-face as benchmark Increase social presence with

Verbal Non-verbal, body language Context

Impacts sense of emotion, intimacy, immediacy

Importance of Social Presence

Common groundAchieving shared understanding

Turn-taking Infer meaning from context Activating pro-social norms

Lack of social presence, increased aggression, decreased trust

Common Ground Theory

Coordinating both content and process Achieving shared understanding

Mutual knowledge, beliefs, assumptions Grounding behaviors

Help to achieve common ground Impacted by communication medium and task Examples:

Gazes, nodding, pointing, facial expression Checking, repeating, rephrasing

Media opportunities

Co-presence, same place, same time Visibility Audibility Cotemporality (as sending, other is also receiving) Simultaneity (can send and receive at same time) Sequentiality (messages in sequence) Reviewability Revisability

Media opportunities by Media Type

Media Opportunityies

co-p

res

ence

visi

bili

ty

aud

ibili

ty

cote

mp

ora

lity

sim

ult

an

eity

seq

uen

tial

ity

revi

ew

abili

ty

revi

sab

ility

M

edia

typ

e

Face to Face x x x x x x

Telephone x x x x

Video teleconferencing x x x x x x

Answering machines x x

E-mail x x

Letters x x

Bulletin Boads x x x

Chats x x

MOOs (Text only) x x

MUDs (graphical) x x

Virtual Environments x x

SMS (mobile text) x x x M

edia

typ

e

Social Information Processing Theory

People seek to develop relationships Need to acquire information, and test theories, to

develop impression about another person Impression formation through CMC slower, but

possible if given enough time Expectation of future interaction activates

impression seeking behavors: makes people more friendly, seeking info from

others, etc.

IN CSCW (also GDSS)(computer supported cooperative work and group decision support systems)

CMC can be good, or bad, depending on your goals

Reduced Interpersonal affect Increased task focus emphasizing content, minimizing social influences Reduced group solidarity More equal participation

Can have multiple synchronous participation Shy people less inhibited

More criticism from lower-status individuals Less likely to have leader emerge Takes more time to make a decision (need 4 or 5 times more time to

have same # of exchanges), but Less influence in group decision-making by leaders

Hyperpersonal CMC

Online interactions become hyperpersonal Idealized perception

In absence of prior information, over generalize from what information the do have

Tendency towards overly positive impressions In-group identity (same group, must be good) Wishful thinking

Disinhibition from low social presence, more self-disclosure Behavioral confirmation

Optimized self-presentation

Communication Technologies in a social context Real time face to face not always preferred Why select a medium?

Over time, over location, over many people Attention demands

Central, no multitasking Vs. peripheral, enabling multitasking

Interruptivity Social context

Main channel vs. backchannel

Persistent E.g. save phone # on cell phone

Always available (cell phone) Conflict harder face to face

Email Still the Killer App Time based

notification with read/unread flag

Sometimes threaded (GMail)

Most sharing (URLs, files, pictures) in context of email

Email as Habitat

People use throughout day Major means of non face to face Main means of document exchange Co opted to do lists, contact management Meeting event coordination RSS sometimes integrated Common to have email “personas”: work email, home

email, junk email

Any communication application *not* intregrated with e-mail missing important opportunity for user attention

Zimbra

Very web 2.0, web based email

Because web-based, can integrate open API’s, widgets

See demo: http://www.zimbra.com/demos/zimbra_overview.html (click on topic index, then View a map demo)

Instant Messaging

MSN MessengerStandard IM client

AdiumIntegrates multiple IM accounts

Other IM services

Skype – IM that enable Voice over IP Trillian – Mac based, integrates multiple

IM accounts into one Campfire – group IM

Meebo

Very web 2.0 IM service

Integrates different accounts

Meebo

Rich client look and feel

Can use widget to plug into web pages, blogs

Discussion Groups

Yahoo

Standard Integrates

w/email

Discussion Groups

WholeNote Threaded

conversations

Yahoo

Message threading

Same conversation in Gmail

2001 MSN Communities Analysis

Number of Members

% of Communities

Avg. # of Messages

Avg. # of Photos

Avg. # of Files

2 34.3% 1 18 13-5 32.1% 2 23 2

6-10 14.5% 7 30 211-25 10.2% 20 36 3

26-100 6.3% 77 63 5101-500 2.0% 431 136 4

501-1000 0.2% 926 324 81000 > 0.3% 3505 867 8

Analysis of 20K communities

Now called MSN Groups

2001 MSN Communities Analysis

What are people using discussion groups for?

Type of Community

% of Total Memberships

% of Total Communities

Avg. # of Members

Avg. # of Messages

Avg. # of Photos

Avg. # of Files

Share interest/activity 22% 29% 10 14 23 1Adult 21% 4% 67 18 79 1Dating 17% 5% 42 29 16 1Similar people 13% 13% 14 13 19 1Information exchange 9% 9% 13 16 10 2Self 7% 19% 5 2 30 1Religion 5% 3% 21 55 12 2Family 4% 13% 4 2 35 0Group 2% 3% 9 10 15 1Support 1% 1% 21 32 5 0Humor 0% 1% 6 9 24 2

Average: 14 13 25 1

2001 MSN Communities AnalysisHow does type of group impact measures of

health?

Type of Community

% Members that Post

Community Duration in Days*

Poster Duration in Days*

Number of Messages per Person

Replies per

Message

Adult 13% 143 9 1.9 0.5Dating 19% 88 8 2.6 0.7Similar people 25% 76 9 3.3 0.6Self 30% 31 7 2.5 0.6Information exchange 31% 96 11 3.3 0.6Shared interest/activity 31% 78 12 3.8 0.7Religion 34% 106 16 6.4 0.8Support 35% 137 16 4.1 0.7Group 35% 79 17 2.5 0.5Humor 39% 40 10 3.5 0.6Family 42% 27 7 2.1 0.4

Average: 24% 77 11 3.2 0.6

Conversation through photo sharing Check out: http://projects.ischool.washington.edu/mcdonald/papers/McDonald.HICSS-40.preprint.pdf

Positional Play Looking, pointing at other

pictures Image quote

Take image, modify, repost Text in picture Animation Theme Collaborative Story

Contextualized Conversation

Messages and threaded messaging on primary content, content provides context

Largely blogs, but can appear anywhere

Newsvine messages

Embedded reply

Large scale conversation

Netscan – analysis of Usenet discussion lists

Netscan -- Conversation Analytics

Netscan -- Treemap

Conversation Map

Warran Sack Berkeley

Sociable Media Group

http://smg.media.mit.edu/index.html Many

interesting visualizations, e.g.:

Mountain Visualizing

people emailing