COMP 113 Social Media & Online Communities, Summer School 2012

2: Services and blogging

Today

Chat

Class reps voting

Project groups allocated (?)

We are talking about:

– Social media types

– Blogging

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PART 1: Social media services

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Logo quiz

1. Twitter

2. Facebook

3. Tumblr

4. LinkedIN

5. Google

6. LastFM

7. YouTube

8. Myspace

9. FriendFeed

10. Diigo

11. Email

12. RSS

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Social Network Sites (SNS)

Build, manage, and publish public connections to friends, family, contacts, colleagues, strangers, ...

Built around: – Everyday life – Business – Photos – Music – Bookmarks – Pets – ...

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Facebook: what is it?

Social network site (SNS) Advertising platform Developer platform Video and photo sharing

site Search engine Largest online community

in the world Successful business Culturally significant ...?

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Personal vs. Pages

Admin/like

Characteristics

Separate from personal profiles

Focus on “page” not individuals

“Like” is not the same as “friend”

Groups also available

Own/administer more than one page

Can identify as a “page”

http://www.involver.com/applications/

LinkedIN

Largest professional social network site

Users: 120 million

Created in 2002

Valuation: $8 billion

Utility: networking, job recruitment, groups, recommendations, subscriptions

Photo/video/audio sharing

Easily publish and share multimedia content

Tags to identify and organise

Find and make connections

E.g., Flickr, YouTube, LastFM, ...

RSS Feeds & aggregators

Real Simple Syndication

Subscribe to dynamic content

Construct own “newspaper”

Redistribute content, e.g., Facebook

Wikis

Hawaiian word for "fast"

Wikis are user/community editable web pages

Anyone can add and edit content

Changes saved and can be reverted

Discussion Forums

Oldest form of online community

Indexable therefore searchable

Established community roles

Issues include:

– arguments

– spam

–bots

– trolls

Blogs (Web Logs)

Allows easy self-publishing

Posts appear in descending order

Main Features:

– Journal Entries

– Comments

– Syndication (RSS)

– Authorship

Services: – Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger,

Posterous,

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Everyone outside!

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Twitter

Social messaging service (SMS)

Simple, quick, immediate, and real-time

Post “tweets” with max. 140 characters

Publicly accessible (cf. RT radios)

Follow and be followed (no reciprocity)

Accessible by web, mobile, desktop (& space!)

What do people do?

Talk & share

Break news Customer service

Build networks

Crowd source

Manage events

Monitor trends

Discover new things

Stalk celebrities

…

Action examples

Tweet

Re-tweet

Favourite

Follow/unfollow

Block/Report

Search (tip!)

Lists

Hashtags (#)

Author attributions (^..)

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Working with your table mates: • Find out what these are? • Why they are needed?

Retweet Shortened link Reply

Hashtag

Tweet breakdown

Author attribution

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#newtwitter

#newnewtwitter

Following vs. followed

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[Made by the Common Craft Show]

twitter “The cloud”

websites

Tweet ... Tweet ...

Tweet ...

Tweet ...

“The cloud”

Tweeple

API

Twitter data ecosystem & API

Life Stream Aggregators

Pull together personal media

Better manage online activities

Unify online identity

Share with others

E.g., Friendfeed, Soup.io

The mobile internet

Instragram

Twitter for iPhone

Facebook

Foursquare

...

Location sharing

“Check-in” to:

– Venues

– Locations

– Businesses

Comment on experience

Share on other services

“Gamification”

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Gamification

Utilising gaming principles to motivate participation

Usually rewards system based

E.g., badges, mayoralties, points, challenges, completion

Social media analytics

Measure social activity & influence

Real-time statistics

Can be useful for ROI

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Any others?

END OF PART 1

PART 2: Blogging

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Why blog?

Drive traffic to your website (e.g., inbound links, keywords)

Create opportunities (serendipity)

Develop & enhance reputation

Attract new customers, fans, supporters, ...

Generate a culture around the business

Express a point of view

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How to blog?

Choose your blog service - brand accordingly

Integrate with website & social media

Decide on publishing schedule

Prepare range of topics (keywords)

Follow general web writing guidelines

Provide subscription options (email, RSS)

Services

Posterous (http://posterous.com)

Tumblr (http://tumblr.com)

Blogger (http://blogger.com)

Wordpress (http://wordpress.com)

Writing Guidelines

Write descriptive, keyword laden titles

Write short paragraphs (1-3 sentences)

Be clear, simple & informal

Incorporate keywords in text

Include other media to augment story

Invite replies with questions or comment requests

END OF PART 2

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