Word of the Day – (epic)fail

For heaps of reasons in general (like my computer just crashed), but specifically because I have started scheduling interviews for my research (ethics approval pending) and since I am studying social media use it seemed reasonable to communicate via social media. Well, I am connected to some participants in Facebook so I thought I’d try to send messages within Facebook instead of email. I don’t use the “send message” functionality much, but it crashed 8 times while I was trying to send 4 messages. I am still not sure if they finally went through so I ended up using Twitter to contact everybody. Not the best privacy-wise, but at least it works. Hmmm… wonder if I should rethink my research position….?

The burstiness of social media

I have been thinking about the patterns of activity in my own blog and in my social media behaviour in general.  There are times when a certain topic will attract heaps of traffic and discussion and other times when my blog stats look like they have flat lined.  Over the past two days on Facebook I have been caught up in a couple of examples of bursty activity.  The first was a six degrees of separation group (this one was about wine-buddies).  Where you forward an invitation to friends to join the group. I usually ignore these requests, but the subject was so specific that it didn’t feel like spam when I sent off the requests – certainly those friends that I had shared a good bottle of wine with wouldn’t mind me acknowledging that fact.

The other was a meme (see http://famartinniemi.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/meme-me-up-scottie/).  Memes always peak my interest because I really want to find a way to incorporate meme-behaviour in blog-based interviewing for my research.  It always amazes me how easily people will participate in a meme and how quickly they spread.  The latest one in my Facebook social circle (and beyond by now I am sure) is the “p57 sentence 5 of the nearest book”.  Within just moments of seeing the meme we were all grabbing the nearest book and hoping it wasn’t something too embarrassing to post.  Luckily I am still reading Joe Bennett’s “A Land of Two Halves” in between academic articles.

I think there must be some perfect balance in successful memes between a low threshold of investment/participation with high return of value in the form of information sharing or community building.  Yet another thing to add to my list of things to investigate.  BTW – If you are interested in reading more about bursty behaviour in blogs, Ravi Kumar has written a few nice articles which discuss it.

Kumar, R., Novak , J., Raghavan, P., & Tomkins, A. (2004). Structure and Evolution of Blogspace. Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 35-39.

This article reports that blogs constitute a remarkable artifact of the Internet. Most people think of them as Web pages with reverse chronological sequences of dated entries, usually with sidebars of profile information and usually maintained and published with the help of a popular blog authoring tool. They tend to be quirky, highly personal, typically read by repeat visitors and interwoven into a network of tight-knit but active communities.

Kumar, R., Novak, J., Raghavan, P., & Tomkins, A. (2005). On the Bursty Evolution of Blogspace. World Wide Web, 8(2), 159-178.

We propose two new tools to address the evolution of hyperlinked corpora. First, we define time graphs to extend the traditional notion of an evolving directed graph, capturing link creation as a point phenomenon in time. Second, we develop definitions and algorithms for time-dense community tracking, to crystallize the notion of community evolution.

Too freaked out to blog

OK, I have lots of nice feedback from the last post and I should be responding to those comments and writing a new related post, but I just can’t tonight.  I am too freaked/worried/excited/nervous and really just too much of a mess to blog properly.

Generally, I consider myself lucky that I have been spared the inundation of political commentary and advertising on the US election.  Sometimes living on the other side of the world totally rocks (what am I saying – it rocks all of the time).  Although, I get the feeling that New Zealanders are more interested in the US election than the NZ one.  Which is an interest level slightly higher than completely disinterested, but lower than vaguely aware.  Thank goodness they only coincide every 12 years.

Anyway, I have been fairly sucessfully staying away from politics, but it all came crumbling down tonight when 2 things happened…. First I logged on to Facebook and saw the coolest thing.  Many of my friends had changed there status (see picture).  And secondly, I heard that there was going to be live coverage from 12.30am until 5.30am.  Well how can I pass that up?!  It felt like old times, watching CNN all day long – listening to the winner change every so often – biting my nails, drinking coffee.  So instead of blogging properly (or doing any other work that should be getting done) I am going to return to my American roots and watch the election returns on TV.  But I am also kiwi, so I’ll do it listening to the Guy Fawkes fireworks in the middle of the night because nothing (not even rugby!) is on GMT+12:00 time.

Aah, forgot to end in a question…. so, uh, how about those Bears?

UPDATE:  It is 12.26am and no elections in sight.  A quick check of the the NZ TV One site and yes I got it completely wrong, the coverage starts at 12.30pm (which makes sense because it is only 6.30am in NY and the polls haven’t even opened yet) – going to bed as soon as the coffee wears off.

Fa is thinking that microblogging rocks

Short and sweet.  Twittering and updating Facebook status is in a word, perfection (better than gum).  It is like walking into a room full of your friends and instantly knowing what everybody is up to, with just a quick glance.  One “is relaxing at home” and another “is studying” and yet another “is heading out for Thai food”.  Ok, that’s it then.  No wondering what’s been happening during the 4 hours since I last checked, I’ll just have a wee glance.

The other part I really like about microblogging is that it seems to encourage response comments even more than “normal” blogging.  One “is voting by absentee ballot”, which is followed by “who’d you vote for?” and on and on.  In fact I just learned that one of my friends had a baby, he “is trying to remember how to swaddle a wiggly baby”, “your baby?!  well done!!!”.  It is like a little microcosm of life events, all told in the third person and served up on my news feed.

My supervisor just joined Facebook and asked about that aspect of it, “is it always in the third person?”  Yeah, Fa is thinking the third person is kinda weird, but you get used to it.  I also can’t quite stop using the “is” even though you don’t need to any more.  Fa is attached to the “is”.

Microblogging forces you to concisely describe your mood, activities, disposition, and general state of being in under 255 characters.  I guess the trick for me is to figure out what is so appealing about the microblog and replicate it in my regular blog.  Shorter posts?  More provocative topics?  Personal details?  Increased frequency?

Fa is thinking that microblogging is worth some additional research and study.