Social Media Tools

Derek Hansen

BlogsThreadedConversation

WikisSocial Networks

Sharing tools

Mixing It Up

Background

Considerations

A Look Ahead

Historical Note

Reuse is Most Common Use

Social Media as Infrastructure

Threaded Conversation

Email Lists Discussion Forums Usenet

Key Features Goal: Support communities of practice by enabling group

conversations that can be easily overheard Basic unit: short, permanent text message authored by a

single person Organized by: threads

Blogs

Individual blog Organization blog Group blog (i.e., aggregated blog) Microblog (i.e., twitter)

Key Features Goal: Support posting of time-sensitive content and

solicit reactions by readers Basic unit: (1) permanent post with some basic

formatting, (2) brief comments by readers Organized by: time (show most recent posts first)

Wikis

Wikipedia (a particularly popular wiki) Community wiki repositories

Key Features Goal: Support the creation of community-authored

content that can be constantly edited by many people Basic unit: An article (or single web page) that supports

rich formatting of content Organized by: articles (hyperlinks and categories) Note: Stores every edit and prior version of an article

Social Networking Sites

Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn Specialized communities - e.g.,

tudiabetesKey Features Goal: Help people find, maintain, and benefit from their

social relationships Basic unit: Profile page and “friends” Organized by: people & groups Note: Typically include many ways of communicating

with others

Social Sharing Tools

Flickr (images) Del.icio.us, Digg (websites) YouTube (videos) CiteUlike, Connotea (journal articles)

Key Features Goal: Share items or information of interest Basic unit: Items or links to items Organized by: tags and votes

Mixing it up

RSS Feeds Widgets, Gadgets, and Apps APIs and Interoperability Mashups

Rss Feed

Content from RSS feed

YouTube video

Custom Search

Considerations

Understand your audience & theirneeds

Social challenges (e.g., motivatingpeople) trump technical challenges

Build vs modify vs off-the-shelf? Host yourself or use third party hosting

solution?

A look ahead

Continued rapid pace of innovation More than just conversations (e.g., health

information) Use of smart mobile devices for new forms of

social interaction More “off the shelf” tools

Credits

http://www.flickr.com/photos/oneeighteen/1690769913/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zhurnaly/87396143/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cupcakequeen/2447557364/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chasing_imperfection/269997777/

http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/02/social-media-starfish/

Derek L. Hansen

Assistant Professordlhansen@umd.edu