Social Network Sites – The strength of the weakest of ties
Posted on | August 2, 2010 | No Comments
As Granovetter explained in his 1973 article, The Strength of Weak Ties, our weak ties (i.e., our network of acquaintances rather than friends) play an especially important role in the diffusion of information because are acquaintances are more likely to possess new perspectives and knowledge, whereas our friends are more likely to share much of the same knowledge. What I find amazing about social network sites is how weak the ties can now be, and how difficult my own job would be without them.
Much of my working life is spent as a writer- writing about various web technologies and their use in libraries – and for this I need two things: to be commissioned to write, and to have content to write. In the last few weeks social network sites have helped with both aspects.
Twitter Serendipity – I was following a publisher on Twitter who put a call out for freelancers. Whilst I had exchanged emails with the publisher before, the tie would have been too weak for them to have thought to contact me directly.
LinkedIn Mining – Writing an article on the use of social networking sites in libraries I needed to get the perspective of a librarian in a commercial environment; unfortunately I didn’t know any. Luckily I knew a man who I thought would – my undergrad supervisor who has been churning out librarians for decades – whereas I wouldn’t have necessarily emailed to ask him for names, I was happy to make use of his open network.
Without Twitter I would never have got one piece of work (and hopefully more in the future), and without LinkedIn another piece would have taken much longer to complete. It’s amazing to think how many organizations continue to prevent workers accessing social network sites, and the opportunities that they are missing.
How open can traditional publishers be?
Posted on | June 30, 2010 | No Comments
Last week I gave a talk at an Elsevier corporate customer event in Amsterdam: Web 2.0 and 3.0 in corporate libraries. I was invited along based on the Web 3.0 promises change for libraries paper I had written for Research Information, and jumped at the chance not only for a free trip to Amsterdam (which is not actually that great as for some reason my academic career was filled with trips to Amsterdam), but also to hear from Elsevier, one of the world’s biggest publishers.
As the title of my talk suggests, it was a wide-ranging talk, covering everything from social network sites and mobile phones to blogs and open data; all the papers and work I’ve done over the last year packed into a single half hour. Many of the topics I discussed were also covered by the Elsevier speakers, albeit from with a typically corporate flavour. Two examples of which are their iPhone app and their forthcoming application platform.
Every time a company launches an iPhone app I cringe. 1) It forgets the fact the overwhelming majority of people don’t have an iPhone. 2) It’s often more about being seen to have an iPhone app than having a useful app. Whilst there is undoubtedly a use for a mobile Elsevier application, and there will be many iPhone users, it would have been better to spend the money on enabling external developers to interact with Elsevier content rather than developing a single application.
The good news is that in the future Elsevier will be allowing developers to build applications around their content, unfortunately once again it will be done with a distinctly corporate flavour: an application platform where developer’s programs can be run after they have been approved by the a panel of Elsevier staff and external researchers!
Elsevier, like many organizations, are recognising the advantages to be had by making their data and content available to a wider range of users in the places and ways that the users want it, and the advantages of engaging with external partners. However, also like many organizations, they are worried about how their data will be used. Technical adoption is one thing, cultural change is another.
Local Public Data
Posted on | April 20, 2010 | 1 Comment
Most of yesterday was spent at a really interesting Local Public Data Workshop in Birmingham. The aim of the day:
To generate ideas and understanding about what is needed to drive the local public data initiative at a local level
The group was comprised of people from the local councils, and an eclectic selection of “bloggers/developers/activists/academics”. Curiously I found myself labelled as “social media activist”, probably the least appropriate of the four available labels.
Overall the workshop was very positive. There was very little ’should we be doing this?’ , instead it was ‘how are we going to do this?’ Everyone recognised the risk-adverse culture in local government, and the potential problems that could occur when opening up certain data, but the questions from the council were far more practical – where are the ontologies? what should we open? A bit of a push from central government and the world of local data will be transformed.
There were, understandably, a few questions about data usage, and incentivizing wider use of the data is an area I would like to see discussed more. The need for stories (i.e., case studies by a friendlier name) that sell open data to the wider set of stakeholders was widely recognised, but to really kick-off this virtuous circle of open data we need local stories of unexpected data use. Whilst some data has more obvious wider interest than others (crime, accidents, etc.), let’s incentivize the less popular data sets; show councils that whilst they may not immediately see the wider applications of the data they are opening, other people will.
It should also be noted, that whilst everyone in the room was on board, it’s unlikely that proposition will be universally popular. As one wily old dog pointed out afterwards, one of the risks of opening up the data, that wasn’t mentioned, was to council jobs.
Facilitating Access to the Web of Data: a guide for librarians
Posted on | April 2, 2010 | 2 Comments
Two and a half months after I sent off the book proposal, the ink is now drying on the ‘Memorandum of Agreement’ between myself and Facet Publishing: “The publisher of choice for the information professions” and the first one I sent my proposal to. I promise not to be “obscene libellous or defamatory” and they promise to publish my book.
As the title of this blog suggests, the book will be on the web of data. Facilitating Access to the Web of Data: a guide for librarians is currently the provisional title, and pretty well sums up the scope of the book. Increasing quantities of data are being made available online all the time by a variety of organisations and individuals. Most noticeably over the last year, governments throughout the world. Just yesterday saw the opening up of the UK’s Ordnance Survey data. This data has huge potential for researchers, businesses, and the general public, and library and information professionals have an important role to play in making sure it realises its potential.Whereas ’social media’ and ‘web 2.0′ are the buzz words in organisations today, in six months time it will be the ‘web of data’…at least that’s what I persuaded my publisher.
Having already written one book-length document, in the form of my PhD, I must admit the thought of writing 75,000 words by 6th December 2010 is slightly daunting. But at least this time I will working in a field where there is seemingly a never-ending supply of innovative people creating exciting services.
If you want to know more about the ‘web of data’ and some of the work that is being done, it will be the focus of May’s Black Country Social Media Cafe. The finishing touches are still being made to the cafe’s line-up of speakers, but rest assured I will not be speaking and trying to get advanced orders for my book….unless you really want me to 
A Dubious Honour: As many ‘professional’ articles as ‘academic’ articles
Posted on | March 22, 2010 | No Comments
Whilst I wasn’t a scholarly undergraduate, there is one particular acetate that sticks in my memory – or rather, one particular acetate for which I had vague recollections that I filled out by emailing the relevant (now retired) professor. It concerned the classifying of academics according to the quality and quantity of their outputs.
If you only write a few articles you are either a ‘waste of space’ or a ‘Reimann’, a genius mathematician who only wrote about 10 highly influential papers. Whereas if you write a lot of articles you are either a ‘hack journalist’ or a ’star’ depending on the quality of the papers.
The coursework associated with the module was an investigation of a particular academic, for whom you had to come to a conclusion about where they would be positioned on the grid. My academic for investigation was Bob Usherwood – then a professor in the information studies department at Sheffield University. In typical judgmental undergraduate fashion I decided he fell into the ‘hack journalist’ category, as he had written a number of articles in trade publications as opposed to solely publishing in peer-reviewed academic journals. With hindsight I have decided to agree with the professor who decided my selection was a bit harsh…especially as I have just put the final touches to a paper on Linked Data which means I now have as many professional articles as academic articles.
Curiously the academic papers I have had published over the last year have taken far less effort that the professional publications, whilst the professional publications have been cited far more often, albeit often in places that didn’t exist in 2002.
Will the Next Election be a Social Media Election?
Posted on | March 13, 2010 | No Comments
Like many other people around the UK I have had an increasing number of political leaflets posted through my door as we approach the next election. However, whilst social media offers the opportunity for the candidates to engage in a conversation with their voters, the online element still seems to be secondary to the one-way approach of traditional media. The online element is generally tucked away, suffers from curious branding decisions, and occasionally at a different URL to the one provided.
What follows is an unscientific analysis of five recent leaflets by the three main parties that have come through my letterbox.
intouch - Local Park Ward leaflet by the Conservative Party
No online presence indicated, just a rather difficult to read unbranded email address on the front page.
Change – Leaflet from the parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party
Unbranded email address on middle pages, with a link to a generic static Wolverhampton Conservatives web site (www.wolverhamptonconservatives.com) with no worthwhile content.
Rob Marris MP – Leaflet from the local Labour MP
Link to my local MP’s regularly updated blog at the bottom of the back page (www.robmarris.org.uk).
Wolverhampton: Your choice! – Leaflet from the Wolverhampton MPs and parliamentary candidates
At last a leaflet with a URL on the front page, and whilst it’s not a blog, it is at least a regularly updated web site with relevant local information (www.wolverhamptonlabour.com).
Focus – Local Park Ward leaflet from the Liberal Democrats
Without a doubt the local Lib Dems have made the biggest attempt at promoting a social media presence, highlighting Twitter, Facebook, as well as URLs for various Lib Dem web sites. The local councillors are using their official @wolverhampton.gov.uk email addresses, whilst the other email address is a @wolverhamptonlibdems.org.uk.
Unfortunately they also made the major mistake:
Wolverhampton Lib Dems don’t have a .co.uk domain!
Conclusion
A mixed set of results for the local parties, with the Conservatives having made a particularly pathetic effort. Traditional media has probably still got the most influence when it comes to a general election, but where there are small majorities (and ‘Wolverhampton South West’ is one of the most marginal seats – majority 2,879) there is no doubt that marshalling the forces of social media could make the difference. Unfortunately for the Lib Dems, they are the party for whom the gap is probably too big for social media to make the difference.
Social Media Metrics – Topsy
Posted on | February 11, 2010 | No Comments
I regular write for Research Information, an online and print publication about online content and information management. Whilst online publishing can give you access to a host of statistics not readily available in the traditional printed copy, publishing on someone else’s site means that you have to look for some of the traces left on the web. Whereas in the past I would have first looked for inlinks to web pages, now I tend to focus more on the conversations happening on social media sites such as Twitter.
Today I was pleased to see how the two Research Information articles that have been published up to now [there are more in the pipeline] compare with other articles in the same journal.
According to Topsy 81 of Research Information’s web pages have been mentioned on Twitter, and the most popular two are by me: Programming skills could transform librarians’ roles (78 mentions); Web 2.0 fails to excite today’s researchers (67 mentions).
As would be expected, at least by the biblio-/webo- metricians amongst you, the distribution of Twitter mentions broadly follows a power law.
Which means third place is quite a distance behind on 43 mentions, and the vast majority of pages have only been mentioned once or twice.
Metrics are only the start of a conversation rather than the end, as there are a host of possible reasons for the difference in Twitter mentions, e.g., my papers may be considered more controversial by some sections. Nonetheless, it’s nice to start the conversation from the top of the pile .
Time to ban Christmas?
Posted on | February 1, 2010 | No Comments
At last it is February, and I am thrilled to see the back of both December and January.
From the 1st of December it is virtually impossible to get any work done as everything revolves around Christmas: the parties, the break, the present buying. If you were visiting Britain from a country that didn’t celebrate Christmas you would be forgiven for thinking that Christmas was a month long festival rather than a single day.
Then finally January arrives, but just as you think you can throw yourself back into work you find that everyone else is catching up on the work they should have done in December!
It is only now that things finally seem to be getting back to normal. On Friday I finally received the Jan/Feb issue of Online with my article What are Libraries doing on Twitter? and the book with my chapter Social Network Sites: An Exploration of Features and Diversity that should have been published at the end of last year.
Nb. Unfortunately my Twitter article has not been made freely available online, so (unless you have a subscription) you will have to wait the 90 days before I’m allowed to put a preprint online.
Lawyers on MySpace?
Posted on | December 18, 2009 | No Comments
As I’ve mentioned before, and will no doubt mention again: there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to social media. Just because a particular web site or technology is flavour of the month doesn’t mean it’s necessarily right for you or your business. In fact your ideal network may be one considered past its prime.
I came across a good example of this at today’s Birmingham Social Media Cafe, where I spoke to a couple of people from Cornwall Street Chambers Media Law Group (CMLG). Despite new media’s talk of the demise of MySpace in favour of the less-gaudy Facebook, and the more business-orientated LinkedIn, CMLG find that MySpace is still a web site that works for them.
- MySpace has the demographic they want to work with.
- They find that they can fit MySpace into their personal routine.
Surely these are the two most important factors in the adoption of any social media technology.
The Importance of the Editor….Generally
Posted on | December 16, 2009 | No Comments
In addition to regularly writing magazine articles, I regularly review books for a couple of library and information science journals. It provides a great way to get books I wouldn’t buy otherwise [academic books can be VERY expensive]. Unfortunately in editing one book review recently (best example of how not to publish a book
The original comment on the book’s index:
The eclectic nature of the work means that an index is essential for the social software researcher, but whilst it has an index, it is eccentric to say the least. For example, whilst the foreword informs readers that it covers issues such as tagging and folksonomies, these terms are missing from the index, whereas, bizarrely, both World of Warcraft, dark forest scene; and World of Warcraft; are worthy of inclusion. The index is littered with such idiosyncrasies.
The edited version:
The eclectic nature of the work means that an index is essential for the social software researcher – while there is an index, it is eccentric to say the least. For example, the foreword informs readers that it covers issues such as tagging and folksonomies, but both terms are missing from the index, whereas, bizarrely, the World of Warcraft is worthy of inclusion.
On its own the original finds nothing bizarre about the inclusion of World of Warcraft.
Coupled with which, in a review complaining about the book’s number of typos, my editor managed to introduce a typo! It went from “There is little to recommend this book” to “There is little to commend in this this book”.
Whilst exasperating, this my only bad experience of the publishing so far, although as I’m currently working on a proposal for a new book, I’m sure there are many more annoyances ahead.
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