CSCI 1107 Social Computing Fall 2012 Adapted from materials by Dr. Bonnie MacKay (Dalhousie U.)

Contents Syllabus Introduction – A Brief History of Social Computing – What is Social Computing – Class Activity

Syllabus — Evaluation 40% Term Project (group) – 20% Project Milestones (4) and Project Log (using Facebook) – 30% Project Proposal Write-up – 10% Final Proposal Presentation (15 minutes + 5 minutes questions) – 15% Project Write-up (approx. 8 pages in provided template) 60% Individual Work – 45% Tests and Exam – 5% Participation (includes mandatory labs) – 10% Assignments and Quizzes

Syllabus

Syllabus — Project Information Made up of 4 Milestones To help with the proposal and the final project Groups will decide and hand-in: Project topic and research question/hypothesis Milestone 1: – Literature review of what other researchers have done (academic research – digital libraries) – Each group member submits a paper – Each group submits a group paper Summary of group’s individual papers

Project Information Milestone 2: – Formalize and finalize your topic and research question/hypothesis – Develop study design and user tasks and questionnaires Milestone 3: – Complete all elements of study Milestone 4 (after proposal and pilot study): – Draft report of results of study

Project Information Topic / Goal Develop a new Social Computing App [e.g., on small sized device] (prototype) Modify or extend an existing Social Computing App [e.g., on small sized device] (prototype)

Project Information Potential (Research) Questions: Is this application useful? How does this new/modified/extension compare to the current method? Approach: – Literature review – Develop a prototype of your proposed application – Design a user study asking participants to do different tasks to help evaluate the usefulness of the new app or to compare the current app

Miscellaneous Academic Integrity (see syllabus for full description) – What does academic integrity mean? Honesty and fairness, etc. – How can you achieve academic integrity? Credit others for work, don’t copy or pass work off as your own, etc. – What if an allegation of an academic offence is made against you? I am required to report any suspect cases - see Where can you turn for help? – Instructors – The Learning Center (FCS) – The Writing Center (Dalhousie) – The Library (Dalhousie)

CSCI 1107 Social Computing Adapted from materials by Dr. Bonnie MacKay (Dalhousie U.)

Topics Applications Survey Evaluation - Usefulness, Effectiveness, User Satisfaction, etc. – (e.g., study design, prototyping, analysis, etc.) Social Impacts Social Computing Technologies

Why are we here? To survey a variety of social computing applications and learn how to evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of these applications. To be introduced to a variety of perspectives on the social issues and impacts that stem from social computing. To be introduced to the various technologies used to implement social computing applications and resulting issues.

A Brief History of Social Computing The Background of Social Computing – 1970s - Pre-Internet – 1980s - Pre-Web – 1990s - Web 1.0 – 2000s - Web 2.0 – ????s - Web 3.0 Social computing began in the 1970s (pre-internet) – Computers could be networked – Computing became affordable

1970s — Pre-Internet First sent Electronic Information Exchange System (EIES) – Created by Murray Turoff – First “Groupware” software (e.g., to deliver courses, conferencing sessions, facilitate research) – Forerunner of Bulletin Board System (BBS) – Used for 1 or more reasons: Group cannot meet in person Anonymity needs to be preserved Group is too large Group is too diverse (interdisciplinary) One-on-one communication is too slow Group members tend to disagree 1979 – First online BBS

1980s — Non-Internet based Pre-Web BBSes [computer Bulletin Board Systems] – Person to person mail – Message boards – Games – Files exchanges FidoNet – Phone based network of BBSes each BBS was called a Node – Global message boards – Global person to person mail

1980s — Internet-based Pre-Web and mailing lists Usenet (newsgroups) Chat rooms (IRC, AOL, Compuserve) MUDs [multi-user domains] MUSHes [multi-user shared hacks] often used for social gaming

1990s — WWW – WWW made available to the public Web Pages – Often static, information based – Homepages At academic institutions – Geocities Personal web pages Early Social Networking Sites – TheGlobe.com Allows personalization, content publishing & interaction with other users – Classmates.com Networks of classmates – Sixdegrees.com Networks of friends – Basic Web Logs (Blogs) Allowed people to put content on-line No comments or linking (one-way)

1990s — WWW 1.0 First IM system created by ICQ – Purchased later by AOL Organizations provided content – Britannica – Newspapers – mp3.com – Akamai (content distribution) – Content management systems Users were passive Web content is mostly static P2P explodes on the scene – Napster

2000s - Web 2.0 Web content user user-driven and dynamic Interactive sharing of information, collaboration Community rather than organization derived Updates are faster and more frequent Less dependable? More Saturated? Web 1.0Web 2.0 AkamaiBitTorrent mp3.comNapster Britannica OnlineWikipedia personal websitesblogging content management systemswikis directories (taxonomy)tagging ("folksonomy")

Is this the end? Usage seems to be plateauing What's next?

2000s — Web – Friendster 2003 – MySpace, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Photobucket 2004 – Facebook, Digg, Flickr 2005 – YouTube, Reddit 2006 – Twitter 2007 – iPhone, Tumblr 2008 – Groupon – Facebook overtakes MySpace as #1 Social Network 2011 – Facebook surpasses 600 million active users – iPhone iOS5 is integrated with Twitter – Google+ Launched in June, over 10 million users sharing 1 billion items per day – Diaspora