The document discusses social networks and their value and importance. It covers topics like how social networks derive value from user participation, how they promote cooperation and shared content creation. It also discusses key concepts like Metcalfe's Law and Reed's Law, which explain how the value of networks increases exponentially with the number of users. Examples of popular social networks like Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia are provided throughout.

1. Web 2.0 blog, wiki, tag, social network: what are they, how to use them and why they are important Lesson 9: social networks

2. This material is distributed under the Creative Commons "Attribution - NonCommercial - Share Alike - 3.0", available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ . Part of the slides is the result of a welcome distance collaboration with prof. Roberto Polillo, University Milan Bicocca ( http://www.rpolillo.it )

3. Using Social Software software that gives users a way to connect (usually through the contents sharing). - Value sharing: social applications where increased users participation increases in quality and quantity of content and therefore a higher value of the service. The collective dimension, then, is the guarantee of the existence and quality of service. Eg Wikipedia - Value sharing and cooperation : cooperation on contents not only shared but co-created, becomes an additional element of value. The ability to "create together" contents increases of an order of magnitude the degree of relationship between people and promotes sociability from the moment of creating content. Eg docs.google.com Web 2.0 social aspects 1

4. Which is the value of the contents of Web 2.0 applications As a service acquires contents (and value) through the direct participation of users and visitors, Web 2.0 applications are in a sense " hostage " of the user High and sustained user participation is a condition of survival of social networking sites The popularity of Web 2.0 service seems to be a critical element that sometimes overwhelms the same quality User power vs. Big Companies power What should happen if users run away from Google/Facebook? Web 2.0 social aspects 2

5. Participation Many services adopt mixed policies to promote participation (Eg some parts of the site visible to everyone) Another factor to consider is the degree of customization of users participation. Systems such as WordPress, for example, allow the owners of the blog to set up different levels of access to content production and to enable comments at all or only to registered users Another aspect to consider: many Web 2.0 services combine free use and use fee ( freemium ) - the paying customers receive the highest quality services, additional functionality, while not paying are excluded Web 2.0 social aspects 3

6. New authorship dimensions: Copyright and Copyleft Production, sharing, assessing and putting some content in the network open a lot of issues related to copyright, putting sometimes in crisis, the concept of copyright itself Questions: Who owns, in fact, contents shared and commented?

7. It is wholly owned by those who wrote or you can assign to writer AND commentators?

8. And if so, to what extent?

9. Are sufficient and suitable only quantitative criteria to determine the degree of Authorship? All this, moreover, is complicated in the case of collective or co-created content in distributed editors: for example, who is the author and owner of publishing rights of Wikipedia voices? Creative Commons … see licences Web 2.0 social aspects 4

10. Web 2.0 users Web 2.0 sites are since many years in the first positions as users number: web 2.0 became a “mass” phenomenon http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none some funny number http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/01/12/social-media-web-20-internet-numbers-stats/ Other numbers http://www.kaplaneduneering.com/kappnotes/index.php/2010/04/more-random-web-20-statistics/ O'Reilly reflection: Internet Operating System http://www.slideshare.net/timoreilly/state-of-the-internet-operating-system-web2-expo10

11. Web 2.0 users During 2007-2009 the media gave prominence to a narrow subset of Web 2.0 sites, YouTube and Second Life first But which sites are actually the most visited and used? The answer is not simple, since the object “Web 2.0 sites” is not perfectly defined However, some studies have tried to shed light on some aspects of the phenomenon. According to the survey project JISC University of Oxford, Queen of Web 2.0 is Wikipedia http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2007/03/16/some-real-data-on-web-20-use/

12. Social network “ social networks” are the heirs of Usenet, the network of discussion groups (newsgroups) using nntp protocol Today the newsgroups and their archives are under the "protection" of Google, which guarantees the continuation in "web" mode http://groups.google.it/groups/dir?hl=it&sel=33592333&expand=1 Many terms used in social networks (and in all 2.0 applications) were born in the Usenet community: post, thread, lurker, troll, ...

13. Social network http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc (social network) In social networks users create their “profile” (data and photo), and can be “friends” with other users (to confirm) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites facebook vs. MySpace http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=facebook%2Cmyspace&date=1%2F2008%2012m&cmpt=q how many “friends” on facebook? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number Trend: real-time (like Twitter) and location-based (GPS)

14. Metcalfe's Law But why millions of people daily access to platforms such as YouTube or Flickr? We have to go back to Metcalfe's Law: the law is named after its inventor, the American Robert Metcalfe, and dates from the end of the seventies: "The use and value of a network is equal to n(n-1), where n is the number of users. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com and other companies, is also famous for having predicted the collapse of the internet in 1995 and for having "eaten" literally, as promised, the article in which the forecast was written

15. The Reed's Law Metcalfe's Law was an evolution of the law of Sarnoff (radio pioneer) that claimed the linear relationship between users on a network and its value David Reed argues that the value of networks does not grow proportionally to the square of users, but exponentially. This applies to the GFN (Group Forming Network), networks where people use computer networks to form groups Image by www.kaltura.com

16. Networks, Nodes, Hubs ... Topology In sociology Milgram studied the "degrees of separation”, the distance that exists between two points of a network based on their indirect links: between two distant strangers, between two web pages on the Internet or between two molecules of a cell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation Milgram experiment in 1967 to understand the "distance" between U.S. citizens: selected citizens of Wichita and Omaha (see) must send a letter to two citizens of Boston putting it into the hands of “known” people ... an average of 5.5 steps (although many went missing). Barabasi, "how big is the Web? and how many degrees of separation? ". An experiment in 1998 estimated the "diameter" of the Web to around 19.

17. Social network - facebook Facebook: big expansion in Italy in 2008 (see Google insight) – why? http://www.vincos.it/osservatorio-facebook/ Reed Law? (see Metcalfe-Reed + LongTail) Expansion in Italy (and other countries): http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/italy on http://www.socialbakers.com/ see also pages, brands, apps and advertising Social network sites historical analysis: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html Numbers: http://mashable.com/2009/12/30/facebook-2009 http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics http://www.internetworldstats.com/facebook.htm

18. Social networks Many websites allow anyone to easily, interactively, create a social network following his needs, whether public or private Ning was a free service (including hosting of the site), now under payment, founded in 2004, reached in 2009 1.9 million social network! http://blog.ning.com/2009/12/happy-new-year-to-our-1-9-million-ning-networks.html now http://www.socialgo.com/ read together document 2010-social-networking-report.pdf http://www.hitwise.com/us/resources/reports-and-webinars

19. Participation level For which concerns the user participation to “cooperative” websites, some author underlined a participation inequality, for which only 1% of users are really active http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_Rule Participation in Social Networks Site see doc Lawlor Summer Seminar talk 2010 v2 wn.ppt Tone in Social Networks http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Social-networking-climate.aspx see pdf

20. Social side of the Internet Source: The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

21. Social side of the Internet Source: The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

22. Social side of the Internet Source: The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

23. Social network – the digital self Audience unknown : in real life, we see our interlocutor and context of the meeting, in social networks we don't know who can see ourselves in the future, and in which context Merging separate contexts: in real life, we keep separate different aspects of our "self", in social networks it's very difficult Remarks: The social self http://www.slideshare.net/jtneill/lecture2-social-self-2 The widgetized self in the blogosphere http://www.slideshare.net/silvertje/the-widgetized-self-in-the-blogosphere Autocartography: mapping the self http://www.slideshare.net/rsmyth/autocartography-mapping-the-self

24. Social network Campaign websites: http://www.thepoint.com “ As a consumer, employee, citizen, activist, parent, or whatever, sometimes you can’t do things alone - you need the power of many . The Point offers a new approach to leveraging the influence of groups and making things happen.” Music education: http://www.keepingscore.org/sites/default/files/swf/tchaikovsky/match-music Move beyond your site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

25. Social Bookmarking Based on tagging http://del.icio.us/ plugin http://www.stumbleupon.com/ plugin The service allows users to keep track of bookmarks, share with others, discover other users' favorites: everything is based on the association of keywords to your bookmarks No more the old browser bookmarks crowd: a set of tags that helps you to focus on aspects most relevant to you The mechanism for bookmarking and tagging is simplified by the ability to add buttons to your browser with which to mark your favorites and add keywords Last trend: http://pinterest.com/

26. exercise 9 Your Social Network usage on PC vs. on mobile phone

27. Describe how Social Networks changed your life and you relationships with “friends”

28. Test and comment at least one location-based service (Google Latitude, Facebook Places, Foursquare)

29. Compare Facebook and Twitter