Principles and tools of the social web - An introductory seminar

Preface Principles and terms Important technologies/services Applications Problems Sources

Principles and tools of the social webAn introductory seminar

Dr. Konrad U. Forstner

February 19th, 2010 @ EBI, Hinxton, UK


Table of content

1 Preface

2 Principles and terms

3 Important technologies/services

4 Applications

5 Problems


Preface

You get no handouts as

... we want to save trees

... you will get these slides as a PDF file

... links work pretty bad on paper


Preface

Terms

“Social web”, “Web 2.0” (strongly promoted by O’Reilly),“Collaborative web”

Very fuzzy definition

No big difference to Tim Berners-Lees basic idea of aread-and-write web


Table of content

1 Preface



4 Applications

5 Problems


Everybody can be a sender

Improved usability

Low technical and financial barriers

Easy to use rich desktop-like applications (e.g. due to AJAX)


User generated content

Collaborative creation

“Wisdom of crowds”

“Crowd-sourcing”


Network effect

More participants = more value per participant


Reusability / Mash-ups

Open standards + APIs

The web as platform

E.g. RSS “Really Simple Syndication”

Content + meta dataMakes following and sharing of content easy


The importance of data

... increases


Open licenses

Classic copyright limits the sharing and extension of culturalgoods

Creative commons licenses (a.o.) free content

⇒ “Share, Remix, Reuse - Legally”

http://creativecommons.org/


Functions/user groups change

Many web services / tools are used in a different way and bydifferent people than planned in the beginning


The long tail

Critical mass easier reachable

Solutions for niche target groups become feasible


Folksonomy

Social classification and tagging of items


Social graph

Abstraction of human relationships

Node - individuals or groupsEdges - social relationships like friendships


Some business models

Advertisement

Freemium - basic service for free, extras for a fee

Trend spotting

None - waiting to be bought by big player (e.g. Google)


Some more recent developments

The real-time web

Location based services

Add-on: combined with augmented reality

Semantic markup

Data portability / distributed networks


Table of content

1 Preface



4 Applications

5 Problems


Blogs

Web log

Structure of a blog post

TitleAuthor(s)ContentCommentsTags/CategoriesPermalink


Blogs

Blogroll

Linkback (Refback/Trackback/Pingback)

Example types of blogs

EdublogTravelblogArtblogOpen lab journalCorporateblog


Blogs

Self-hosted software like Wordpress, Habari

Blog services like Blogger.com, Livejournal

http://wordpress.org/

http://www.habariproject.org/

https://www.blogger.com/

http://www.livejournal.com/


Podcasts

Blogs/Feeds that mainly/only link audio or video files


Wikis

Collaborative content generation and management

Examples: Wikipedia, Wikitravel

http://wikipedia.org/

http://wikitravel.org/


Social network services

Some examples

Managing your social graph

General: Facebook, Friendster

Business: LinkedIn, Xing

Science: Nature network, BiomedExperts

Hospitality: Couchsurfing, Be Welcome

Mobile: Foursquare, brightkite

Create your own one: Ning

http://www.facebook.com/

http://www.friendster.com/

http://linkedin.com/

http://xing.com/

http://network.nature.com/

http://www.biomedexperts.com

http://www.couchsurfing.com/

http://www.bewelcome.org/

http://foursquare.com/

http://brightkite.com/

http://www.ning.com/


Media sharing platforms

Images: Flickr, Picasa

Videos: YouTube, Vimeo

Slides (and publications): e.g. Slideshare, Nature preceedings

http://flickr.com

http://picasaweb.google.com

http://www.youtube.com

http://vimeo.com

http://www.slideshare.net

http://precedings.nature.com/


Social tagging

URLs: delicious, simpy

News: digg, reddit

Publications: CiteULike, Connotea

http://delicious.com

http://www.simpy.com/

http://digg.com/

http://www.reddit.com

http://www.citeulike.org/

http://www.connotea.org/


Microblogging

Usually limited number of characters per messages

Real-time updates and searches


Microblogging

Best known - Twitter

140 characters per message

Tweet, retweets

Hashtags

Connection not necessarily bidirectional

followers and following

URL shorteners like bit.ly or is.gd gained popularity

http://twitter.com

http://bit.ly/

http://is.gd/


Aggregators

Bundling and sharing of users’ online activities

E.g. FriendFeed, Cliqset

http://friendfeed.com/

http://cliqset.com


Table of content

1 Preface



4 Applications

5 Problems


Source of news

Easy individual selection of info streams

Social filtering

Serendipitous discovery


Getting solutions

Asking question at general or specialized platforms

“Dear lazyweb ...”

E.g. Aarkvard, Sciencestack

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

http://vark.com

http://sciencestack.com/


Knowledge exchange and management

E.g. a wiki in an institute

E.g. shared link and publication collections in a group


Building and maintaining communities

Spreading news

Harvesting feedback and proposals


Identity building and reputation management

For individuals or organisations


Open Science

Publishing raw results

Open lab journals


Table of content

1 Preface



4 Applications

5 Problems


Walled gardens and data lock-in

Missing data portability

Users give rights to the site owner


Private data, privacy, identity

Once in the web - hard to get out again

Identity theft


Community management is tough

Critical mass, rules, permissions, work flow, complaints, consensus,vandalism, conflicts, attribution, discussion ...


Interruptions

Frequent notifications = perfect productivity killer

Solution: Have fixed times for checking news


Image sources/attribution

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179910918/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/72949751

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikinews_Broadcast_Studio.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Criminal_brains.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/truthdevelopment/2249491026/

http://www.flickr.com/photosm/stylianosm/3989939286/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/86399392@N00/109404222

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/62/Creativecommons-informational-flyer_eng.pdf


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Long_tail.svg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksurman/3604105727/



http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinfoilraccoon/197640807

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Future73nb.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30360780@N02/3420795034/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/72949751

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikinews_Broadcast_Studio.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Criminal_brains.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/truthdevelopment/2249491026/

http://www.flickr.com/photosm/stylianosm/3989939286/


http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/62/Creativecommons-informational-flyer_eng.pdf


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Long_tail.svg




http://www.flickr.com/photos/tinfoilraccoon/197640807

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Future73nb.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30360780@N02/3420795034/


Image sources/attribution

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:His_Master’s_Voice.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chiodini_wiki.jpg


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burmese_music_casette_tapes,_Yangon,_Myanmar.jpg

http://flickr.com/photos/marksurman/3604105727/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neunt\protect\grmnU@D1ex\setbox\z@

\hbox\char127\[email protected]\advance\dimen@\ht\z@\fontdimen5\font\dimen@\accent127\

fontdimen5\font\grmnU@Do\penalty\@M\hskip\z@skipter_gr.jpg


http://www.flickr.com/photos/bravenewtraveler/2278115499/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccacnorthlib/3554628032/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Team_touching_hands.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fazen/3778408/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/3807807369/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/128239619/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/russellbernice/261188642/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:His_Master's_Voice.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chiodini_wiki.jpg


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burmese_music_casette_tapes,_Yangon,_Myanmar.jpg

http://flickr.com/photos/marksurman/3604105727/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neunt\protect \grmnU@D 1ex\setbox \z@ \hbox \char 127\dimen@ -.45ex\advance \dimen@ \ht \z@ \fontdimen 5\font \dimen@ \accent 127\fontdimen 5\font \grmnU@D o\penalty \@M \hskip \z@skip ter_gr.jpg




http://www.flickr.com/photos/bravenewtraveler/2278115499/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccacnorthlib/3554628032/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Team_touching_hands.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fazen/3778408/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/3807807369/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/128239619/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/russellbernice/261188642/


About this document

Created in LATEX using the beamer class, TeX Live, Emacs and gimp.

All these programs run on OpenBSD.

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http://www.gimp.org/

http://www.openbsd.org

Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (*)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

by Konrad Forstnerhttp://konrad.foerstner.org

(*) Excepting the EMBL Logo

Document version 1.0 2010/02/19

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http://konrad.foerstner.org

Principles and tools of the social web - An introductory seminar

Technology

Transcript of Principles and tools of the social web - An introductory seminar