Social Networks
Entries related to social networks, group psychology, anthropology, and really any of the social sciences.
EntreCard Top Dropper Map
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 03/03/2009 - 09:10Every day bloggers visit other blogs and drop their ‘EntreCard’ on the blog. At the end of every month, many of those same bloggers put up blog posts about the people that have dropped the most cards on them. I’ve written similar posts in the past.
However, I thought it would be interesting to create a map showing the relationship of different card dropping bloggers. I’ve selected the list of ‘top droppers’ from various blogs and created a graph of them using GraphViz. I’ve shrunk down the size so the picture fits nicely in this blog post, which makes it hard to read the blog names.
However, if you mouse-over the blog, you will see the name, at least for most of the blogs, and if you click, it will take you to the blog. Near the middle is Orient Lodge. From the spoke connecting, you can get a sense of the other blogs that are most connected.
Building A Social Network Contact Management System
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/02/2009 - 11:16As my number of followers on Twitter approach 2000, Friends on Facebook approach 1,000 and the number of social networking sites I’m on approach 100, I need to find a better way to manage my networks and my contacts within these networks. I can’t find a good tool, so perhaps I need to build it myself.
Let me start off by describing what I am looking for. I would like a nice, easy to use tool that would list all of my contacts along with what networks they are in. As an example, many of my followers on Twitter are also friends on Facebook. My contacts on DandyID, overlap on an average of thirty social networks each.
DandyID comes the closest to the first part of what I would like my Social Network Contact Management system to do. However, it is still in its early stages and the only people I know there are the experimenters. I would like something that includes everyone from all my networks. In addition, while it does provide an API, it doesn’t provide easy tools to act upon the information. As an example, I’d love to be able to pick any social network and find out which of my overall contacts are on that specific social network that have not yet connected with. MyBlogLog also provides a very nice cross reference list of different social networks my contacts are in, which I can retrieve in a FOAF file, and several other sites provide similar information.
Yet this only gets to the first half of what I would like my social network contact management system to do. The next part is to keep track of my contacts. Part of this would include the sort of social network aggregation that a site like FriendFeed does.
I would like to be able to see all of the content that my contacts have recently put up. Ideally, it would combine duplicates. For example, I use sites like ping.fm, HelloTxt, and Posterous to send the same message to multiple sites. Also, some sites have the ability to feed or pull posts between their network and other networks. When you put all of this together it can get pretty complicated, as seen in the Social Media Map that I created last summer.
Yet more importantly, I want to know when I’ve actually contacted someone in my online social media meta network. When did I last sent them a tweet, retweet something they wrote, write on their Facebook wall, send them a message or give them a call? Whom haven’t I contacted recently that I really should contact? Do I have other notes about them that are important? Who are their friends and relatives online? When are their birthdays? How do they fit into whatever my goals are in using social networks?
To push it even more, I would like to add information such as whether I’ve visited or commented on their blog recently, or whether they’ve shown up on my blog, as noted by tools like dropping EntreCards, or showing up in recent readers lists like those provided by MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog.
Some of this is the standard sort of things that a good customer relationship management system does. I briefly looked at CiviCRM
What do you think? Are you looking for a tool something like this? Are there other things that I should consider? Are there tools out there that come close to this? Feedback is greatly appreciated. I’ve already come up with some initial design ideas which I will share later, perhaps incorporating some of the feedback I get.
NPR and Twitter
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/28/2009 - 13:50It is Saturday morning. I turn on my laptop and check various websites; new friends to add on Facebook, Tweets to reply to on Twitter. I grab a cup of coffee and tune in Weekend Edition on NPR. I am not alone. NPR has just run a story about Twitter, and Andy Carvin’s efforts to get Dan Schorr to use Twitter. In the world of Twitter, it is a big story.
During the time that Weekend Edition is on in my area, there are nearly 300 tweets about NPR. Many are simply saying, “Listening to NPR”. Others go into much more detail. They talk about the weather. Some people are experiencing snow or rain. For others it is just overcast. Some try to beat the weather by sitting next to a fire in the fireplace. For me, it is a beautiful sunny day, but we do have a winter storm watch for tomorrow evening.
A few people mention their morning beverage. In my sample there are twice as many coffee drinkers as tea drinkers. No one tweeted about Latte, but there was one cappuccino drinker. For food, people talk about corn bread, oatmeal and barley soup.
Listeners talk about still being in bed, or in their bathrobes. Some are doing crossword puzzles or looking at news papers. Others talk about sleeping babies and sleeping dogs. Still others are starting to garden, do the laundry, take their dogs for a walk, or watch birds.
Nearly half of the people mention the NPR story about Twitter and a couple dozen have said that they have started using Twitter because of the story. The responses are varied, about whether or not Dan Schorr ‘gets Twitter’, about how long NPR has been following Twitter. To the person that thinks that NPR just discovered Twitter, they have had Andy Carvin working for them and Twittering for quite a while. Andy has already sent out over 20,000 tweets on Twitter. However, I haven’t been able to get to any of his messages prior to last July.
Responses to the twitter story include discussions about ‘editorless content’, the agora, and the quote, “Twitter: Because no man is an island”.
People are also talking about other stories they’ve enjoyed. Many talk about the economy. Others talk about the library blog, a story about algebra, the interview with Philippe Petit or the piece on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. This is an area that I like. With Twitter, I can join with likeminded people around the country who are also listening to and sharing their reactions to Twitter.
NPR becomes a top trend on Twitter, at least for the morning, and many people comment on it. Later, the trend gets passed by Transparency Camp, “un-conference … about convening a trans-partisan tribe of open government advocates from all walks …to share knowledge on how to use new technologies to make our government transparent and meaningfully accessible to the public.” To great trends that ought to go good together.
So, next week, I’ll probably listen to Saturday Weekend Edition with Twitter Search tuned to NPR. Perhaps we can continue the discussion there.
This Week and Beyond in Social Media
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 02/27/2009 - 21:35It has been another week preoccupied with computer programming, although I did get a chance to participate in some social media activities this week, as well as get through at least a little bit of my email.
It started off with a few messages that I sent out from the Woodbridge Board of Education meeting. I used ping.fm so my messages went to a bunch of different locations. My first two messages were
At Woodbridge Board of Education where there is a discussion of twenty first century curriculum linking world languages and technology
One of the students is doing a wonderful presentation of the food pyramid in Spanish using the Smartboard.
On Facebook, a Connecticut State Representative, Jonathon Pelto responded ‘wow – cool’. Over on LiveJournal, a friend from Michigan whom I met years ago when her teacher used a text based virtual world that I ran to teach a class on ‘Brave New World’ responded ‘Smartboards are sweet…especially when properly used.’
After the meeting was over, I chatted with the chair of the Board of Education as well as the Superintendent about the real time online discussion I had about the meeting. It says something important about the world our students are being prepared for. There is so much more I want to write about this when I get some free time.
On Tuesday, I received an email from another longtime friend. The Rev. Kate Heichler of Church of Christ the Healer, together with The Rev. Mark Lingle of St. Francis Church, both in Stamford, have set up a Lenten Reflections blog. Kate suggested that I might offer to help the church I attend, Christ Church, Bethany set up a similar Lenten Reflections blog.
I’ve been very busy, so I quickly threw together to live for a season and when I get a little more time will help people at the church with the blog some more.
Thursday, I went to a Mystic Sushi Tweetup. I joined @JoeCascio, @trishdarling of smashingdarling.com, and @EmrysTetu of WellnessWithFood.com at Peking Tokyo in Mystic for a dinner of sushi. We had a great discussion covering a wide selection of topics.
Today, I receive a message on Facebook from State Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield inviting people to the Judiciary Committee Public Hearing. In the invitation, Gary said, “"If you care about the Raise the Age legislation and or abolishing the death penalty and you have time on Monday you should come testify." He provides information about testifying at the hearing.
As I went through my emails, I’ve found plenty of other important events. Next Wednesday at 7 PM, Kim will be speaking about election day registration at the Democracy for Fairfield County Meetup at the Silver Star Diner in Norwalk. Ned Lamont will also be speaking there about the stimulus package. Democracy for New Haven will be meeting at Wednesday, starting at 6:30 at Wall Street Pizza in New Haven having a discussion about the Connecticut budget proposal. State Sen. Toni Harp, Co-Chair of Appropriations Committee, and Sal Luciano, Executive Director of AFSCME Council 4 are among the speakers expected for an action oriented public discussion.
The Shoreline League of Democratic Women is also having a meeting the same evening. Their meeting will start at 7:30 at the Guilford Library and will host a panel of State Legislators talking about smart growth.
Then, on Thursday, the Energy and Technology Committee will hold a Public Hearing about four bills, including AN ACT CONCERNING PUBLIC ACCESS TELEVISION CHANNELS, along with three other bills. I haven’t read the proposed bill closely enough to have any opinions on it, but would love to hear comments from others.
Also on Thursday, Common Cause volunteers will be helping get the spring mailing out starting at 5:00 PM at the Common Cause office at 55 Oak St in Hartford. Then, starting at 6:10 in Room 128 of the Main Hall of Yale Law School, the Yale College Democrats, the Yale College Republicans, and the Yale Law School Democrats will sponsor an event with Common Cause to discussion election day registration. State Rep. Lesser and State Rep. Winfield will be speaking.
Friday, the Connecticut Fund for the Environment will be holding its 19th Annual Long Island Sound Citizens Summit: Investing in Clean Water: for Sound health, jobs and the economy. The summit will take place from 8:30 until 3:15 at the Holiday Inn Hotel and Conference Center in Bridgeport.
Looking further out, there are a few important social media related events coming up. On March 12, is digiday:Mobile and digiday:Social at the W hotel in New York City. These are two half-day conferences set up back to back to talk about marketing using mobile and social technology.
On March 21st will be Newsout, “What to do when the newsroom lights go out: Options and strategies for New England communities.” It looks like it will be a good discussion with some great speakers.
Then, ending off the month is Freedom to Connect, a yearly gathering of some of the most interesting thinkers about communications and the Internet.
So, I’ll continue to try and balance some computer programming with some family time and lots of social media, both as quick messages on various sites and face to face meetings as well. What are you up to? Will I see you at one of these events?
Tracking Online Identities
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/10/2009 - 22:47Another day of focusing on programming has gone by, and I’ve had little time for reading emails, blogs, or messages on numerous social networks I’m on. One blog I visited was DedeAndro. He’s been playing with the Lijit recently. I started using Lijit about eighteen months ago, and have left one of their widgets on my sidebar. It shows recent searches and links to some of the different social networks I’m on. They’ve evolved a bit since I’ve added them, and I’ve just added the ability to see more of the information that they’ve collected about me.
They also link into PostRank, a tool which ‘measures audience engagement’. I’ve signed up for PostRank and started playing around with it, but don’t have much of an impression of it yet. I did add the Greasemonkey script so PostRank can interoperate with Google Reader.
The other news I got today about tracking online identities is from EntreCard. They’ve added the ability ten different social networks on your profile. Currently, I list twelve identities on lijit. On MyBlogLog, I list 34 social networks, on Retaggr I list 54 social networks, and on the most powerful of all, so far, DandyID, I list 76 different networks.
So, I filled in the ten networks that EntreCard looks at, simply copying the links over from DandyID. One of the networks that EntreCard lists is MyBlogLog. MyBlogLog makes the list of networks available in a Friend of a Friend (FOAF) file. It would be nice if EntreCard could have simply read that file. DandyID is supposed to be working on some sort of API as well, although I’ve suggested that they might want to suggest FOAF as well. It would make it easier to have one tool that could life network information from various sites that support FOAF.
So, as the number of social networks grow, so do the interconnections between them, as well as the tools for listing which ones you are on. So, which networks are you on that I’ve missed? What tools are you using that I should consider?
P.S. I just got seriously spammed by some program going out and creating 200 userids, apparently in an effort to spread some sort of Trojan horse. I’ve deleted the userids and changed the registration process. If you’ve created a userid and I deleted it, I apologize.
