1. Web-Technology
Lecture 12

2. Social Web

3. Homo Socialis
Heider, Fritz; Simmel, Marianne (2 Apr 1944). "An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior". American Journal of Psychology. 57 (2): 243–259. 
animation depicts merely shapes
observers describe these objects in social terms and construct a social drama around their movements
Humans Are By Nature Social Animals
Various social interactions are not just important for us, but necessary
Implications for the Web?
As Web grew in content, usage, and functionality, more and more socially-oriented activities that people engage into could be transferred online

4. Social Web
Social Web is a layer of applications and services implementing and supporting social relations that link people on the WWW
Fostering, facilitating and exploiting social engagement and interaction is the key goal of any Social Web app
Participation=Value

5. Factors of Success
Web provides connectedness surpassing time and location differences
Web has lots of content to interact with and about
New interfaces and applications emerged that made it easier to
Create content
Build up communities
Collaborate
Mobile access – connected anytime, anywhere
Social art – creative people have found new ways to express themselves
Businesses have soon understood that Social Web is the most efficient way to reach and engage customers
Explosion of Social apps and services
Non-social websites have to implement social features

6. Pure numbers

7. History of Social Web

8. Social Web history: the beginning
Bulletin board systems and Online Forums
1973 – Plato Notes is created at UoI - the prototype for online forums, bulletin board systems, and more
1984 – FidoNet is launched (39,000 nodes at its peak in 1996)
While BBSs are largely dead, online forums remain very popular
Usenets / Newsgroups
1979 – the first usenet was launched in UNC
Group sites such as Google Groups are the descendant of usenets
IRC, ICQ, and instant messaging
1988 – IRC protocol is invented and first Internet chat systems are developed
1996 – a popular IRC client ICQ is released later purchased by AOL for more than $400 million
"As long as there are folks who think a command line is better than a mouse, the original text-only social network will live on”
John

9. PLATO*
PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations)
Developed starting 1960s in University of Illinois
First general-purpose CAI/CMI system (grandfather of BlackBoard)
Many modern concepts in multi-user computing were introduced by PLATO and its extensions:
forums,
message boards,
online assessment, ,
chat rooms,
instant messaging,
remote screen sharing,
multiplayer games
emoticons 
online communities

10. Social Web history: sharing
Photo sharing
2003 – Photobucket. Later acquired by Fox
2004 – Flickr. Later acquired by Yahoo!
Social bookmarking and news sharing
2003 – Del.icio.us
Sharing online resources
Tags, tag clouds, folksonomies
2004 – Digg
Resources and news can be up/down voted and commented upon
2005 – Reddit
Most popular news sharing website

11. Social Web history: sharing more
Video sharing
2005 – YouTube. Later acquired by Google
Content (co-)creation / Knowledge sharing
Wikis
WikiWikiWeb
2001 – Wikipedia
Almost 300 languages
More than 5 million articles only in EN
Blogs (Web-log ~ We blog ~ Blog)
1998 – 1999: Open Diaries, LifeJournal, Blogger, etc.
2005 – WordPress (> 1billion websites powered by WP)
Tumblr (>330 million blogs)
Twitter
Microblogging?
Real time news sharing?
Social networking?

12. History – Real-time communication and interaction
VoIP and video-telephony
2003 – Skype
Video streaming and broadcasting
Justin.tv
2011 – twitch.tv
2015 – Periscope
Instant Messaging
2009 – Whatsapp
WeChat
2011 – SnapChat
Social virtual worlds and MMORPG
2003 – Second life
2004 – World of Warcraft

13. History – social networks
1997 –SixDegrees.com
First social network
Based on the concepts of six degrees of separation
A million members at its peak
Purchased for $125 million in 2000 and shutdown in 2001
“Okay, I was in a movie with an extra, Eunice, whose hairdresser, Wayne, attended Sunday school with Father O'Neill, who plays racquetball with Dr. Sanjay, who recently removed the appendix of Kim, who dumped you sophomore year. So you see, we're practically brothers.”

14. History – social networks
2002 – Friendster
First modern SN
Building social circles
Sharing content and commenting on it
Setting profile privacy
Currently about 90 million users
Popular in Asia
2003 – MySpace
Most popular SN by 2006
Customization of profile looks
Instant messaging
Status updates and news feeds
Sharing video and music

15. History – social networks
2003 – LinkedIn
First professional social network
User profiles are resumes representing professional activities and milestones
Connections are mostly between colleagues
Heavily used for employment by both individuals and companies
2004 – (the)Facebook
Most popular SN since 2008
1.86 billion monthly active users
Honorable mentions:
Instagram, Orcut, Baidu, Vkontakte,

16. Social Media Criticisms and Controversies
Privacy and Security
Damage to self (91% of potential employers screen applicants by browsing their social media profile)
Damage to others (25% of teenagers experience cyber bulling incidents)
Hacking threats (600,000 of Facebook logins per day are compromised)
Big Brother is listening (all major Internet companies collaborate with NSA/FBI since ~2009)
Stalkers, child predators and … burglars
Content
Ownership
Trustworthiness
Information bubble

17. Online marketplaces Traditional Sharing economy:
Make use of customer’s activities
Facilitate sales between third parties
Main players:
Amazon
eBay
Alibaba
Sharing economy:
Airbnb
Leasing and renting short-term lodging
4,000,000 lodging listings in 65,000 cities and 191 countries
Uber
transportation (taxi and carpooling)
food delivery
83 countries and over 600 cities
40 million riders use the service in a single month

18. Features of Social Web Apps

19. Essential features of Social Websites
Personal profiles
Social connections
Communication
Participation in groups/communities
Content creation and sharing
Expressing opinions
Effective information access (search, browsing, recommendation, filtering)
Highest level of interactivity and responsiveness
Anything to keep the user engaged

20. Web (2.0) as a platform
Building apps as online services instead of packaged software
Perpetual Beta
New features do not require new releases
Real users are engaged as beta-testers
Device/platform independence
Cost-effective scalability

21. Wisdom of the Crowd / Collective Intelligence
The long tail
Bulk of internet content exist on smaller websites
Bulk of possible applications on Internet can be created in narrow niches
Connecting people to people and people to content in those niches creates immense social value
Examples:
Amazon vs. a traditional department store
Airbnb vs. a traditional hotel
Uber vs. a traditional taxi
Crowdfunding vs. a traditional bank

22. Wisdom of the Crowd / Collective Intelligence
Social navigation
Social feedback and massive participation help assessing quality and reputation
user's navigation through an information space is guided and structured by the activities of others
Potential problems:
Snowball effect – popular items become more popular
Cold start effect – new items are not noticed

23. Wisdom of the Crowd / Collective Intelligence
Communities of practice (Crowdsourcing)
Content co-creation
Crowd-based learning
Crowd-research

24. Big Social Data Users must have a voice Embrace the network effect
Sharing/Ranking/Commenting/Liking/Blogging/Accessing/Interacting in any other way creates data, data creates value
Participation should be encouraged
Embrace the network effect
The value of the service as a whole grows with the number of users and the level of participation

25. Rich User Experiences
Engaging interaction patterns that keep the user involved and in control
Continuous, responsive interaction
Dynamic, lightweight interface enabled by AJAX
Good HCI design principles supported on SW:
Safe exploration
Instant gratification (accomplished now, not later)
Intuitive, easy to learn interfaces
Consistency: habituation and spatial memory
Design for Everyone
Talk Like a Person …

26. Lightweight Programming Models
The value of a good Social Web service grows based on users and generated data
Light-weight programming models enabling easy integration help scaling this value:
Multiple social features
Integration of 3d party functionality and making your functionality integratable
provide communication endpoints and APIs
follow standards
Syndication of your content and enabling external content
Sharing data with other social services
Maximally open and permissive licensing schemes

27. Current Trends in Social Web Development

28. Dominance of Messengers
more messages are sent via messenger apps than via
messengers should overtake social networks to become the world’s most active social platforms within the next years
people constantly find new ways to use messengers to communicate, messengers innovate
Emojis and Stickers, etc.
Voice dictation,
Audio and video chat
Chat bots …

29. Integrated platforms
E.g. WeChat is now so integrated, it’s almost the entire internet in one app

30. Evolution of Social Video
Video is the fastest growing type of social content
Video live streaming (Periscope, Twitch, Facebook Live, etc.)
the ability for anyone to bring their networks and audiences into their live, here-and-now world
360o Video
interactive video content that puts the audience in greater control of the action
Virtual and Augmented Reality
immersive social experiences that create next-level engagement

31. Professional Social Networking
one of the fastest areas of growth at the moment
Facebook’s and are changing the way teams communicate
grew to 4 million daily active users in 2016
At launch in had 1000 corporate clients
Microsoft paid more than $26 billion for – should have a good reason for that ;-)
There are social networks for scientists (ResearchGate and Academia.edu, Mendeley), programmers (GitHub), teachers, students, military etc.
Potential use:
recruitment & job hunting – connecting with potential candidates/employers
enterprise networking – building a connected culture between teams and geographies
external collaboration - identifying and engaging potential partners and customers
amplifying influence – promoting key people and engaging media

32. Social Commerce
In simple words: “social commerce is the use of social network(s) in the context of e-commerce transactions.” © Wikipedia
e-commerce apps employ more social features (ratings, comments, status)
‘buy buttons’ are becoming common across social platforms (Instagram, WeChat, …)
People buy based on trust
People trust their social connections, brands they follow, communities they are members of, users with authority (e.g. celebrity), majority (likes)
Types of social commerce applications:
Social network-driven sales (Facebook, Twitter)
Peer-to-peer sales platforms (eBay)
Group buying (Groupon)
Peer recommendations (Amazon) 
Participatory commerce  (Kickstarter) …