An Overview of Microblogging
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Transcript of An Overview of Microblogging
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