UKOLN is supported by: Evidence, Impact, Metrics Social Web Services: Evidence for Their Value Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, UK This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Twitter: #ukolneim Acceptable Use Policy Recording this talk, taking photographs, discussing the talk using Twitter, IM, etc. is permitted if distractions to others are minimised. Acceptable Use Policy Recording this talk, taking photographs, discussing the talk using Twitter, IM, etc. is permitted if distractions to others are minimised. Blogs:Twitter: (automated)

Timetable TimeContent Beyond The Institution: Evidence of the Value of Could Services and the Social Web Social Web Services: Profiling Early Adopters [BK] Case Study 1: iTunes U: is it Worth it?, Jeremy Speller, UCL Case Study 2: Media Services in the Cloud, Sarah Sherman, Bloomsbury Consortium A Framework for Gathering and Using Metrics for Use of Social Web and Cloud Services Coffee Report Back Action plans Conclusions 2

3 Beyond The Institution Cloud and Social Web services: Provision of content delivery services Popular & well-used Free institutional effort (& tax-payers money) to do other work Must-use solution in today’s technical/economic context Or: Selling our users’ eyeballs to advertisers Risky – services may not be sustainable Dangers of lock-in and deferred costs Must avoid – need to be able to own & manage key technical infrastructure Introduction

Today’s Session Relevance of Cloud & Social Web services for today: Determined by evidence (not advocacy) Social Web can be cost-effective:  How?  How much  What are savings?  What are the intangible benefits?  … 4 Scenarios: Headline 1: Unis waste millions on in-house social media when free services available! Headline 2: Students pay £9,000 p.a. to watch YouTube video & chat on Facebook!

Surveys of Facebook usage in UK HEIs “In Nov hits for ‘university’ including Aston, Cardiff, Kent and UCLan” See post on “UK Universities On Facebook” 31 comments; discussion on ‘unauthorised’ claims 5 Introduction Benchmarking: Facebook 8,000 today

Benchmarking: Facebook 6 Seven months later: “Revisiting UK University Pages On Facebook” post, 16 June 2008 Identified 8 most ‘popular’ UK University on Facebook 7,539 1,116 2,976 “I still can’t see any hard data that justifies time and effort spent in managing data natively inside facebook” Post published 4 days after news that Fb is now most popular Social Network Marketing potential trumps Fb concerns?

Benchmarking: Facebook “Planet Facebook Becomes Less of a Walled Garden” survey in October 2010: Revisiting institutions from 2008 survey Significant growth in Cardiff (13,000%), Surrey (540%) & OU (380%) 7 “I still can’t see any hard data that justifies time and effort spent in managing data natively inside facebook” Is: The hard data now available Supportive data available which needs further analysis?

Benchmarking: iTunes U “What Are UK Universities Doing With iTunes U?” Survey published in Oct UK colleges with iTunes U presence Comments on perceived benefits (cost, audience, ease-of-use, downloads, …) 8 Discussion on openness; lock-in & costs – but not on evidence of ROI

Benchmarking: YouTube Edu “How is the UK HE Sector Using YouTube?” Survey published Oct institutions with official presence Page provides stats on visits, nos. of videos, downloads, fans, comments, …. 9

Benchmarking: YouTube Edu Note blog post led to discussions on best practices; other institutional & departmental channels, … 10

Other Work (1) Small-scale monitoring of use of personal tools: UK Web Focus blog registered on Technorati and Wikio 11 Usage statistics for slides on Slideshare

Other Work (2) Small-scale monitoring of use of personal tools: Twitter stats using various service (e.g. Twitoaster) Bit.ly for stats on clicks from tweets 12

13 Questions Any questions or comments? Next two case studies: “iTunes U: is it Worth it?”, Jeremy Speller “Media Services in the Cloud”, Sarah Sherman 13:

Discussion Initial approach has been recording evidence of: Early adopters Usage and related statistics Indications of purpose(s) of services Trends (for Facebook growth) What next: More comprehensive surveys across sector (who does this?, how?, why?) Alternative / complementary approaches? How to relate to impact and value? 14 Note: Informed by case studies

Scenario for Discussion PVC requests evidence of value of institutional use of Cloud Services including the Social Web following tabloid headlines You need to identify: Ways of gathering such evidence Ways of interpreting such evidence Concerns regarding dangers of (mis-)use of such evidence Opportunities provided in aggregation of such evidence 15 14:

16 Questions Any questions or comments?