An Overview of Microblogging

Technology Update3 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???

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

Means of communication

General Uses

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

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)

Text Length Synchronity

μ-blogging 140 characters Asynchronous

Blogging Unlimited Asynchronous

Email Unlimited Asynchronous

IM 300-500 characters Synchronous

SMS 160 characters Asynchronous

IRC 256 characters Synchronous

Methods to access (read) the service

Other methods to update the service

μ-blogging Browser (webpages, RSS), Stand-alone clients, mobile applications

Email, IM, SMS and other mobile applications

Blogging Browser (webpages, RSS) Email

Email Email clients, None

IM Stand-alone clients, browser, mobile applications

None

SMS Mobile applications None

IRC Chat client None

Technology Comparison (2)

Audience/Reach Friend/ Contact list

Visibility of Contact list

μ-blogging

World, community, group,person (1 – many)

Yes Public to Private

Blogging World, community, group,person (1 – many)

No N.A.

Email Community, group, person (1 – many)

Yes Private

IM Group, person (1 – 1) Yes Private

SMS Group, person (1 – 1) Yes Private

IRC Group, person (1 – 1) No N.A.

Technology Comparison (3)

Mar 2006 Oct 2007 Jan 2008 Sep 2008 Jul 2008Dec 2007 Oct 2008

Overview of the Microsphere

Timeline

Categorizing the Microsphere

Narrow focusNarrow focus Broad Focus Broad Focus

Simple features Simple features

Integrated/Additional 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)– Guy 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 Holotescu & 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