In a recent article is said that social media make office-employees more productive. The researches of the VU in Amsterdam had first conducted a research with student. The research had been done as next:

One side of the class was allowed to use social media apps when the want to use it, so no restrictions just like we use it. The other part of the class may only use social media apps twice for three minutes. After the college students had a test about the given college. The group students that got twice three minutes for social media had an average of 0,8 higher than the other group who can use social media whenever they want. 

Also employees with an office job were tested (of course in a different way). A group of 162 employees had been monitored about how long they did about a certain job. They also were asked to fill in some questionnaires about concentration, sensitiveness for distraction etc. Here also two groups were formed, one could use social media as they always had done, and the other group could use social media for 3 minutes per hour. As expected: the prodoctivity in the 3-minutes group, the productivity was much higher. 

Well, some questions raised when I read the article. First you can say ok, it seems obvious, you spend more time to work when you don’t use social media all the time. But during this experiment, there could be the hawthorne effect. So how valuable the study is, is I think doubtful. 

Jon van der Avoird 

Source: http://www.computable.nl/artikel/nieuws/internet/4584405/1282763/social-media-maken-kantoorpersoneel-productiever.html

In this day of age, the technological developments in communications contributes to an increase in power and influence people can have. You can find many uploads on Youtube on police brutality for example. Some videos have led to serious cases, endangering the positions of the involved officers. Also, the revolts in Egypt were organized through new mobile cell phone techonologies.

But is it just the technological advantages? Can you create a hype just by uploading a video? The answer is no. You need to involve your network and have people within your network trying to engage their network for your case (or cause). Then together you can achieve something.

So the power of cell phones is not the cell phone itself. It is just a tool. It’s your network (read: contact list) that can start a buzz. But you have to know how to engage with your network. Know what tickles them and how you can get them to spread your news. And then, you are viral and you have achieved your goal.

What we can say, is that the current level of technological developments in communications, contributes to an increase in potentional regarding personal power: it’s so much easier these days to reach a large group of people.

Jim Luce wrote a blog about the impact of cell phones on psychology, community, culture, arts and economics (the blog has the same title). In this blog, you can find examples of how you can fully use your network for reaching certain goals, through your cellphone:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-luce/the-impact-of-cell-phones_b_508011.html

When studying a phenomenon like social media en social networks, it might be insightful to also look at what the role of society is. Sociologist Manuel Castells has written some highly regarded books on the subject of the network society. In his trilogy ‘The Information Age’, which he has written after a study of 25 years in total, Castells discusses the development of a new kind of society. One which has risen from the development of networks (pushed by ICT) and focuses on flows of information. He describes this era as informative capitalism, whereby the cumulation of knowledge can be seen as the most important source of productivity and characterizes a new economy as well as a new society.

The roots of the informative era can be found in the seventies. After a period of capitalistic crisis, a restructuring occurred of capitalistic entrepreneurship. Castells characterizes this as the ‘informational mode of development’. This new form of capitalism uses informational networks to handle business from factory to worldwide marketing.

The rise of the network society cannot be attributed to globalisation alone, but also to the changing organizational structures. Castells describes how hierarchies are being overthrown and how power is shifting to information workers who operate on networks, which he calls the ‘de-bureaucratisation of affairs’. The big organization isn’t sufficient by just itself. It must derive its power to those with access to the network of self-programmed, self-directed units based on decentralization, participation and coordination.

One of the social consequences of the network society is the dependency on the network. “If you’re not in the network, you will not be able to fully be part of the network society ‘. Mentioning the ‘Space of Flows’, Castells puts the emphasis on information flows within the network society. Disparate and distant places can be integrated into international networks. Those networks connect their most dynamic sectors together. Even though regions are important, Castells stresses the geographical discontinuity that breaks down established relationships. Cities are not places, but processes through which information flows. Large cities are the nodes in a network.

The works of Manuel Castells are very insightful, when dealing with a subject like social media en social networks. He describes the impact on both personal lifes as also for companies.

Once again I will be posting about the bad side of Social Media. People have a strong awareness in the gaming community of how they represent themselves. When I first started playing video games, it was all about investing time in your character to get the best items ingame. Nowadays, It is all about looking “kawaii” (cute). Companies adopted a different business model in which players can purchase items that will change their appearance. I was curious to see how far people would go to be unique within their online social network and how people would respond to this. Once a player is rich in game, that person can buy any item ingame and thereby have an influential position within their network. I know that people would engage in the act of “buying ingame valuta” for real money. But who do they buy from? I stumbled upon this article that might be of interest. In the following article,  people found out that prison wardens in China would  force their prison inmates to play games non stop to farm gold and sell it to other players. The prisoners would get physically abused if they did not reach their work quota. What bothers me here is that the money they earn through this method is more than manually labour. Is power within online social networks really that important? Do we have to behave unethically? The problem at hand is that the recognition of unethical behaviour is slowly fading away, because it involves digital acts. A lot of people download illegal, because they know they can get away with it. People cyberbully, because they won’t see the other person suffering directly. Social media revolves around the digital world and I just hope we can still retain our morals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/25/china-prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

Blog Advertising

When we were discussing the facebook case, in particular the part about advertising, a interresting thought came up. The UnME jeans case for example showed that the ads on facebook had a relatively low clickthough rate, without even considering the fact whether people actually bought things. This makes the use of advertisements rather debatable, since it’s hard to measure the total profit created by a advertisement.

I also heard that the system of advertising on blogs is totally different. If you have a personal blog, you can also ask companies to put ads on display on you’re blog. Though for a company it’s not always that interestring to be visible on every blog, especially if you have to pay for it. Though for the blogger point of few you’re not going to put an ad on your blog if you wont recieve something in return, since it wil offtenly only bother your readers.
The system blogs use is explaned in the link, posted with this post. A blogger can ask a company to put a ad on his or her blog, and if a reader clicks on it, and performs an action like buying something, the companie pays the blogger. This on one hand makes sure companies only pay when they know for sure that they get something in return, and the bloggers get stimulated to keep their blog updated and interresting in order to attract more readers, so they earn more money through advertisements.

I think this system is better, since nobody gets disadvantaged. The interresting thing is that the customer and producer roles are swaped. With facebook, the advertisers are the customers, buying for example space for a certain time from facebook, though with blogging, the blogger is the producer, attracting readers, and the company is the customers, getting the readers, and paying for that if the reader actually buyes things.

As I’m preparing my family to fly on Thursday, I already stumble upon some problems with my airline. Maybe not real problems, more like informational problems and the access to it.
Since this is our first time flying with a baby while also being pregnant there are a lot of thinks to keep in mind such as:
What is the max amount kg luggage that Sera (our baby) can take with her?
What is allowed as hand luggage, and what is allowed as cabin luggage?
What kind of baby food do they have on the plane?
Is there an option for Sera to sleep comfortably?
How do we take our car-seat with us: does it need special kind of wrapping?

To answer my questions I first looked on the website of our airline. Most of the information was actually on there, but this information was contradicting with what it said on our tickets.
So in the end we still had to call with  customer services. Getting again different answers, and also answers that were in fact not stated on their website.
The customer service person told us there’s a possibility for Sera to have a special seat on the plane, he even made a note in our reservation. Well now I sincerely doubt this is true. But the only way to find this out is Thursday night when we’re actually going to fly (so fingers crossed).

One way for the airline (Turkish Airlines) to be more interactive with their customers is maybe through a mobile app where you can select your personal situation such as: student, senior, family with children, etc. By selecting your personal situation you should get all the information you need and maybe the ability to directly chat or email someone from this app.
Airlines should not just use social media  for promotional options, but also for real information and interaction on a more personal level, connecting to the personal situation.

Of course all of this preparing made me think about our coordination presentation on Friday.  Hopefully I won’t forget to put my laptop in my suitcase, because this mommy is not in the mood for dealing with Turkish customer services for a year!!

-Kelly-

Facebook users upload more than 250 million photos every day, from these 250 million photos each day some of these uploads come from your friends. As many of us find it annoying when someone tags a photo of you in a picture that you don’t want to be tagged in or it is an ugly photo. If you haven’t had a negative experience related to your Facebook photos, you most likely know someone who has. Often these experiences cause serious consequences for the person whose photo was uploaded. Some examples are users who lost their job because of a Facebook photo.

Users may try to avoid situations like these by turning on Facebook’s “Profile Review”. This feature enables users to approve tags before they show up on their timelines. But this feature will not stop people form tagging embarrassing photos of you or having these images show up elsewhere on Facebook and the Internet.

Earlier this year Facebook announced that it had purchased Instagram. This alarmed disapproving users who once again expressed dismay, concern and even fear about what it would mean for their privacy. But there are lots of ways on how to save and delete Instagram photos before Facebook will make them visible.

For those of you who are interested. There is a whole article written about the “don’t tag me” problem.

http://socialtimes.com/dont-tag-me_b107033

One of the biggest points of critique addressed to Wikipedia, is that, because of its open source nature, the reliability of its data could be questioned. At one hand, people do not trust on Wikipedia, because anybody can put something on it or amend it. At the other hand, it’s that what the power of Wikipedia is: many eyes make all bugs shallow. This means that when more people are involved or at least viewing it, chances are higher that flaws and mistakes will be discovered. There has been a lot of discussion about whether this is true, but according to CNET News, Wikipedia is as accurate as Britannica, which is an encyclopaedia written by a selected group of experts. You can find the article here:

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html

But even when Wikipedia would supposedly be as accurate as Brittanica, there’s still room for improvement. One way is to appeal to the contributor’s reputation and the importance of its value. When analyzing contributors motivation, one of the most important motivations is building reputation. The next step would be to involve their reputation with the accuracy of their input. This can be done by putting their (user)name with each piece of text/data directly behind it, so people can immediately see who wrote it. And what people can do then, is rate the contribution, which should also be available to see. If a contributor has more than one contribution, all of his or her ratings should be counted and an average rating should be visible on the contributor’s personal page. In short, all the ratings on the input, should form the average rating of the contributor.