An Overview of Microblogging

An Overview of Microblogging Technology Update 3 April 09 Elizabeth Koh

Outline
Introduction
General Uses
Technology Comparison
Overview of the Microsphere
Applications: Enterprise and Education
Microblogging Reflections
Issues
Research Possibilities
Future
Getting started

Microblogging??? μ -blogging? Micro-messaging? Social Messaging? Micro-sharing?

Microblogging???

Introduction to Microblogging
Service which allows subscribers to post short updates online and broadcast them
Answers the question: What are you doing now?
A form of social networking
Many services such as Twitter, Plurk, sfeed, Yammer, BlueTwit, and several International-based sites.

Popularity
Twitter is the fastest growing social community in the U.S.
In Singapore, Tan (2009) reports Hitwise statistics
Users and visitors to Twitter's site jumped 602% between January 08 and 09
Plurk was even more popular, with 184% more users than Twitter last month
Many microblogging services all over the world e.g. Fanfou (China), me2day (Korea), Kronologger (Indonesia)

General Uses Means of communication

General Uses
To see what is going on in the world in real-time

Technology Comparison
Microblogging with
Blogging
Email
Instant Messaging (IM)
Short Message Service (SMS)
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

Technology Comparison (1) Synchronity Text Length Asynchronous 140 characters μ-blogging Asynchronous Unlimited Blogging Asynchronous Unlimited Email Synchronous 300-500 characters IM Asynchronous 160 characters SMS Synchronous 256 characters IRC

Technology Comparison (2) None None None None Email Email, IM, SMS and other mobile applications Other methods to update the service Chat client IRC Mobile applications SMS Stand-alone clients, browser, mobile applications IM Email clients, Email Browser (webpages, RSS) Blogging Browser (webpages, RSS), Stand-alone clients, mobile applications μ-blogging Methods to access (read) the service

Technology Comparison (3) No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Friend/ Contact list N.A. Private Private Private N.A. Public to Private Visibility of Contact list Group, person (1 – 1) IRC Group, person (1 – 1) SMS Group, person (1 – 1) IM Community, group, person (1 – many) Email World, community, group, person (1 – many) Blogging World, community, group, person (1 – many) μ-blogging Audience/Reach

Overview of the Microsphere Mar 2006 Oct 2007 Jan 2008 Sep 2008 Jul 2008 Dec 2007 Oct 2008 Timeline

Categorizing the Microsphere Narrow focus Broad Focus Simple features Integrated/Additional features

Applications of Microblogging
Enterprise
External Communication
Internal Communication
Education
Student-Teacher
Student-Student
Teacher-Teacher

Applications: Enterprise
External Communications
Branding and Marketing
Networking
Customer Relationship Management (Social CRM)
Direct Traffic and Sales
Examples:
Zappos (e-commerce footwear shop)
Starbucks (coffee chain)
Sweet Mandarin (restaurant)
Starhub (telecommunications provider)
G uy Kawasaki (alltop.com founder, @guykawasaki)
Kevin Ong (business coach, @drdollars)
Directory of businesses that use Twitter http://twibs.com/

Branding and Marketing

Social CRM

Direct Traffic and Sales

Applications: Enterprise
Internal Communications
Company-wide communication
IT helpdesk
track internal IT issues
External stakeholder relationship management
converse with partners, suppliers
Knowledge management
ask questions, share resources, locate expertise
Presence awareness
monitor employees
Project management and collaboration
project team updates

Company-wide communication

Knowledge Management
NASA microblogs with Socialcast
“ Using an online social networking approach to capturing and sharing knowledge during the course of business by an intact NASA knowledge workforce provides knowledge in context, is reusable by others in real-time or in the future, and cost effective.” Celeste Merryman (Principal Investigator; McConnachie, 2009)

Project management and collaboration
IBM microblogs with BlueTwit
Internally created service that has its own private messaging and is integrated with Twitter

s
These tools will hopefully “provide a substitute for personal connectors that flew away with globalization – and help to build and strengthen far-flung teams.” (Baker, 2008)

Applications: Education
Student-Teacher
Lecture backchannel
Communication and broadcast channel
Collaboration
Grassroots Virtual Learning Environment
Online course

Collaboration

Grassroots Virtual Learning Environment

Online Course Holotescu & Grosseck (2008)

Applications: Education
Student-Student
Follow the Expert
Language Learning
Teacher-Teacher
Personal Learning Network

A Caution on Microblogging
Privacy
Reliability of the service
Etiquette
Can be resource intensive

Emerging Research Areas
Network Use and Effects
e.g. Java et al. (2007), Krishnamurthy et al.(2008)
Type of knowledge shared in microblogging
e.g. Zhao & Rosson (2008)
Enterprise Applications and Effects
E.g. information, social and emotional effects (Zhao & Rosson, 2008)
Educational Applications and Effects
Preliminary reports by H olotescu & Grosseck (2008), Paul (2008) and Ullrich et al. (2008).
Virtual Community and Effects
Adoption – Individual and Organization Factors

Future (1)
The end of personal privacy?
The challenge of Facebook and other social networking sites?
More innovative mash-ups?
Business intelligence tool?

Future (2)
Part of business solutions?
Part of the enterprise?
“ Companies without a microblogging system will seem as silly and disadvantaged in the future as companies do today that say "we don't need Instant Messaging, we have email," or "we don't need email, we have a fax machine."” (Kirkpatrick, 2009)
The email of the future?

How to get started?
Join one of the microblogging services e.g. Twitter (first mover, most number of users) or Yammer (self-serve private network for companies)
Start posting
Start following others
Start replying to others
Useful link to help you get started
http:// howtwitterworks.com /

References (Images)
Slide background: http://limeshot.com/2008/twitter-backgrounds
Comic: Geek & Poke (2009) Bad Weeds Grow Tall http:// geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/twitter /
Tweet bird image: http:// www.hongkiat.com /blog/twitter-wallpapers-the-blue-bird/
Mumbai attack image: Minxuan Lee (2008)
Failwhale image: Yiying Lu http:// yiyinglu.com /sc/illustration
Bluetwit interface images: http://davanum.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/bluetwit-firefox-sidebar-supports-twitter-too/
Bluetwit users image: http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/bluetwit-user-distribution-by-countr-2
OraTweet image: http://pistachioconsulting.com/oratweet-oracles-enterprise-microsharing-application/

References (Papers)
Baker, S. (2008). Big Blue Embraces Social Media. Business Week, May 22, 2008. Retrieved 29 Mar 09, from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_22/b4086056643442.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories
Holotescu, C. & Grosseck, G. (2008 ) SERIOUS FUN IN EDUCATION: USING MICROBLOGGING. International Conference on Knowledge Based Organization
Java, A., Song, X., Finin, T., and Tseng, B. (2007). Why we twitter: understanding microblogging usage and communities. In Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007 Workshop on Web Mining and Social Network Analysis (San Jose, California, August 12 - 12, 2007). WebKDD/SNA-KDD '07. ACM, New York, NY, 56-65
Krishnamurthy, B., Gill, P., and Arlitt, M. (2008). A few chirps about twitter. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on online Social Networks (Seattle, WA, USA, August 18 - 18, 2008). WOSP '08. ACM, New York, NY, 19-24
Kirkpatrick, M. (March 30, 2009) Status.net Could Point to the Future of Business Intelligence. Read Write Web. Retrieved 29 Mar 09, from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/statusnet_could_point_to_the_future_of_business_intelligence.php

References (Papers)
McConnachie, D. (2009). NASA delves deeper into cyber-space. Technology & Business. Retrieved 29 Mar 09, from http://www.technologyandbusiness.com.au/broadband-business/Features/NASA-delves-deeper-into-cyber-space.aspx
Paul, R. (2008). Twitter breaks down barriers in the classroom http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/03/twitter-breaks-down-barriers-in-the-classroom.ars
Tan, W. (2009). Blogging is so dated - now you twitter. The Straits Times (Singapore), February 5.
Ullrich, C., Borau, K., Luo, H., Tan, X., Shen, L., and Shen, R. (2008). Why web 2.0 is good for learning and for research: principles and prototypes. In Proceeding of the 17th international Conference on World Wide Web (Beijing, China, April 21 - 25, 2008). WWW '08. ACM, New York, NY, 705-714.
Zhao, D. and Rosson, M. B. (2008). How Might Microblogs Support Collaborative Work? Computer Supported Cooperative Work Workshop 2008

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An Overview of Microblogging

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