Social engagement drivers

This paper studies how online communities can foster social engagement. The study is carried out in a site for the neighbours of a suburban town, built in a Domino/Lotus environment. Three different aspects are examined: effects of several design element that were intended to increase interaction, users' profiles and subjects of the conversations.
Design
- while the site is structured in "rooms" for different topics, the "frontpage" (main room) concentrates activity and makes new material more visible
- others systems allow to track users' activities
- notification services
Members selection
Method: a survey has been sent to users in order to know their background and experience, general attitudes about the Internet and the site. The survey included 50 questions and covered different topics: attitudes about technology (comfort and skills, security, usage of synchronous and asynchronous skills), time use (hours spent working, unpaid work, leisure...). Several regression analysis have been carried out using the survey responses as independent variables and the logs of the site as dependent variables.

The independent variables used in the regression models were based on estimated factors scores, which where computed for each respondent using factors solutions.
The measure for participation (dependent variable) is the number of sessions.

While the method of research can be interesting, the outcomes are not surprising at all (we have to note that this text has been written in the turn of the century): skilled users are more likely to participate, as would do individual who spend a great deal of their non-work time socialising and in non-work Internet activities.

Content
The paper also study the subject of the longer threads of messages

Stimulating social engagement in a community network
by: David R Millen, John F Patterson

Search patterns in a corporate social bookmarking service

This brilliant and useful paper found in Riina's blog explores the search patterns in dogear, a corporate social bookmarking service of a multinational company. This service, only available for company's employees, allows to bookmark internet and intranet links. Another particular feature of this system is the corportate identity of the employees that can not bet hidden by a pseudonym.

The research combines quantitative (log analysis of users actions, followed by cluster analysis of these data) and qualitative (15 interviews to users) methodology in order to explore search patterns within the dogear bookmarking. Three big groups are identificated: Community browsing, Personal search and Explicit search.

Millen, D., Yang, M., Whittaker, S., Feinberg, J., 2007. Social bookmarking and exploratory search
URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-031-5\_2

The table (see above) shows the outcomes of the log analysis of users' actions where events represent the action of accessing a particular view (recent posts, another user bookmarks, oneself bookmarks...) and clicks the action of clicking in one result of these views.

Community search is the most common search pattern. Explicit search and personal search (oneself tags) come in second and third place. The more common pattern is to look at the recent post, but other strategies are also used, like looking at what "thought leaders" are bookmarking or what is hot in a particular topic. The interviews have highlighted that this strategies rely on the trust that employees have in the community or in some users. The fact that corporate identity (full name, contact details...) is displayed play an important role here, and also in another search pattern: looking for experts in the company.

Personal search states for users that come back to their own lists of bookmarks and tags. Users that make personal search are frequently those who are active bookmarkers.

While community search is typical of exploratory search (where the goal is not really to retrieve an element but to profile a user, a topic, news...), explicit search is more orientated to retrieve an element. This explains the high percentage of clicks (39%) in these views. Again, the trust in the community play an important role: "...relatively high proportion of clicks... combined with interviews comments suggest that social bookmarking services provide a good way to capture high value pointers to information sources".

A quick link to last edu buzz

on edupunk - D'Arcy Norman dot net

It’s a movement away from what has become of the mainstream edtech community - a collection of commercial products produced by large companies. Edupunk is the opposite of that. It’s DIY. It’s hardcore. It’s not monetized. It’s not trademarked. It’s not press-released. It’s not on an upgrade cycle. It’s not enterprise. It’s not shrinkwrapped.

Plone como plataforma de colaboración

Post sobre las posibilidades de crear un entorno de colaboración con Plone (en 2005)
How Plone Can Become Kick-Ass Community Collaboration Software

Social Media in plain english

Nuevo vídeo en plain english sobre social media. El resto de la cole están aquí a mejor calidad.

Power Law of contribution (2)

Hace algunos meses recogía unos enlaces sobre la distribución de las contribuciones entre los usuarios de un sitio social. Otro de los miembros del grupo de Erik Duval ha presentado un paper con un estudio cuantitativo que viene a confirmar lo que se manejaba ya como un principio admitido en la práctica: un porcentaje muy escaso de los usuarios es responsable de la gran mayoría de los contenidos en sitios como Wikipedia o Youtube.

No hay sorpresas, se confirma lo que para muchos era una verdad indiscutible; de hecho, aunque el artículo dice que es la primera vez que se demuestra, The Guardian publicó hace ya tiempo los resultados de un estudio similar. Sin embargo, como siempre, no todo es tan sencillo. Aunque solo me lo he mirado un poco, algunas de las conclusiones llaman la atención:

• No existen diferencias importantes en la distribución de las contribuciones entre contenidos que demanda poco o mucho esfuerzo (un enlace o crear un vídeo)
• A pesar de que Pareto se puede aplicar, hay que seguir midiendo para evitar sorpresas

Un resumen rápido de lo que dice el paper se puede leer en el post de Duval.

Internet cumple 15 años

Unas líneas para tomar nota de una cuestión anecdótica pero al mismo tiempo importante. Este artículo de ABC (periódico australiano) recoge las declaraciones de Tim Berners-Lee en los actos del conmemoración de la liberación del código de la WWW. Al contrario que Gopher, AOL, o Compuserve que no hicieron lo mismo, algunos de los investigadores de CERN, centro europeo para la energía atómica que se encuentra entre Francia y Suiza, convencieron a sus jefes de que poner a disposición de todo el mundo este código iba a permitir una difusión mucho mayor. Naturalmente, este fue solo un pasito entre los avances de otras muchas organizaciones. En este artículo hay más información sobre el papel desempeñado por el CERN en el desarrollo de las tecnologías que sustentan Internet.

A matter of collaboration

Can we really speak of a collective intelligence merging from the action of scattered users? Can we speak about a will of collaboration or, maybe, it's just that particular and collective interests are matching together? Do we contribute because social tools are useful for us, because we love the idea of open content or because we are trying to achieve a digital reputation? To which extent one or the other motivations are working?
I hear quite often that users begin to use social software because of a personal interest, like the advantage of ubiquity when bookmarking at del.icio.us, and the sum of all these interest is what make new value for the community. Right, but these instrumental goals come together with other social goals, because users are aware that there are not taking notes in their personal notebook and also aware that one tag or another can make more people find these personal bookmarks.
So instrumental and social goals meet together when a user is deciding whether to collaborate and make open its content, links... or keep it in his own folders. Peter Kollock Social dilemmas, anatomy of cooperation is maybe a good perspective to study what's happening between the individual and the collective, even more when we see that this author has also edited a book where the nature of virtual communities is also explored: Communities in cyberspace
And on top of this we have the digital divide matter: a few days ago, danah boyd talked about a first PEW report about adults footprints. Digital footprints is more about privacy than contributing and adding value, but the idea is that adults are very likely to leave information about themselves but they are saying just the opposite, specially to their children. A few days later another report is commented in the same blog. This one is about young people, "teens are much more protective of the content they post online than adults are".

Personal mediated communication and the concept of community

(pre- reading notes) This chapter explores the relationship between the mediated communication and the creation and evolution of communities. After making a revision of the definitions of community that can be relevant, the chapter explores "examines mediated communications, especially the Internet and mobile phone technology, and their potential impact on social relationships within communities"
This link was found in an open Syllabus of a course og H. Reinghold.