CSCI 1107 Social Computing

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

2. Contents • Syllabus • Introduction • A Brief History of Social Computing • What is Social Computing • Class Activity

3. 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

4. Syllabus

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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 http://academicintegrity.dal.ca/Files/AcademicDisciplineProcess.pdf • Where can you turn for help? • Instructors • The Learning Center (FCS) • The Writing Center (Dalhousie) • The Library (Dalhousie)

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

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

12. 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.

13. 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

14. 1970s — Pre-Internet • 1971 - First e-mail 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

15. 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 — Non-Internet based Pre-Web

16. 1980s — Internet-based Pre-Web • E-mail and mailing lists • Usenet (newsgroups) • Chat rooms (IRC, AOL, Compuserve) • MUDs [multi-user domains] • MUSHes [multi-user shared hacks] often used for social gaming

17. 1990s — WWW 1.0 • 1991 – 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)

18. 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

19. 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? 2000s - Web 2.0

20. Usage seems to beplateauing What'snext? Is this the end?

21. 2002 – 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 2000s — Web 2.0