Sorin Adam Matei
Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.
This is a tutorial on a set of core concepts related to Internet communication for the courses I teach at Purdue University. In a previous post about the basic architecture of the Internet, I discussed the Internet’s intrinsic decentralization and its layered…
The West Point Group on Network Science proposes a new method for determining the minimum number and the profile of the people in a network that need to be “seeded” with a message such that the message would become viral. In…
What is computational social science? It is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of vast, intact social networks and “big data” projects made possible by social media. Nature synthesizes the latest advances in this review article… Our own contributions in mining Wikipedia to decipher…
A wonderful list of Twitter Sentiment Analysis Tools collated by Twittersentiment.appspot.com… Twitter Analysis Tools look at the meaning of the tweets and divides them into negative and positive communication items. Since the original list missed some sites, feel free to add yours…
Current college students are called “digital natives.” They are heralded as a new type of intellectual foragers, who can multitask better, gather information faster, and spread it with more efficiency than their adult peers. Nothing less true, affirms Deresiewicz in this scathing…
Marc Smith, cyber sociologist, product developer, Connected Action Chief Scientist, and leader of the Social Media foundation will visit the West Lafayette Purdue campus between September 22-23 and will give a talk about one of his most important projects, NodeXL, on Thursday,…
According to a recent European Union study, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Cyprus lead social networking pack in Europe, with more than 2/3rds of Internet users accessing social networking sites frequently. On the other hand, the same countries are less concerned about privacy…
Google+ is the search giant’s response to Facebook’s recent raise as the most visited site in the world. The tools aim to make the web experience of Google account users a little bit more like that offered by Facebook. The problem is,…
After a great start, with great positive reactions on Twitter, President Obama’s Middle East speech has become only a few days later a more controversial proposition, both for social media audiences and for newsmakers. According to Social Mention, a social media monitoring…
Image via Wikipedia Gene Weingarten wrote a tongue in cheek article for WP about Facebook’s uselessness and the way in which it can become a gigantic time suck, especially for those of us that have other, better things to do. He used…
Image via CrunchBase Sept 23, 4 PM, EST: Facebook appears to be down. I have tried to access it several times in the last hour and it is beyond reach. The current message is that not even the DNS request can be…
Academic researchers have deployed in the last decade several innovative approaches to studying social networking and via graph and complexity analysis. Here is a sampler of most intriguing papers: 1. Critical mass and willingness to pay for social networks 2.NodeXL: Network Overview,…
This is a learning module for the class Contemporary Social / Mass Media Theory taught at Purdue University bySorin Adam Matei Web 2.0 and social media core assumptions The popular concepts of social media and Web 2.0 hinge on the assumption that the…
Image via Wikipedia The Structure of Information Pathways in a Social Communication Network Social networks are of interest to researchers in part because they are thought to mediate the flow of information in communities and organizations. Here we study the temporal dynamics…
A very interesting paper on calculating critical mass and predicting explosion of interaction on social media sites. Image via Wikipedia Disagreement surrounds a formal definition of ‘critical mass’ and of the economic willingness to pay for membership in a social network. Our…
Those with a focus on design now have a social networking site geared to their interests. Dribbble, a site by and for designers, came out of its private beta mode this past weekend. The service allowed members (or “players” as the site…
Yesterday, a new site launched a beta version with the aim of helping users plan informal gatherings. Go Tribal allows users to sign up, identify what days they are free and what they might like to do with friends, and then create plans…
After being overtaken by Google in the later part of 2008, Yahoo now is passed by Facebook. During the last year Facebook doubled its traffic, while Yahoo remained largely stationary. 133 million unique visitors in Jan 2010. From Mashable: Facebook is now…
Tired of having to stay logged into Facebook to utilize the chat function with your friends list on the site? Ever forgotten the need to be logged in to the site and signed out while you were chatting with someone? Well, Facebook…
Gang Signs on the Web creative commons image by JL! via Flickr Gang members use social media to organize payback missions or to snuff out snitches. A Washington Post article cited by Gawker and dugg 172 times reports that gangs regularly use…
LinkedIn is a Web 2.0/social networking site that many are familiar with. The site centers around finding and organizing one’s connections and getting better connected in the professional realm. The site recently announced it will be enhancing its social networking experience. It…
Image via Wikipedia An interesting thought about applying Goffman to online phenomena. A student of mine, Christina Kalinowski, wrote an excellent master thesis on the same topic. Will follow up with more soon. Let me start by shining a light on an…
Social Network Structure Image via Wikipedia Vehovar Vasja and Ziberna Alesia, the first mentioned previously on this blog for his work on recommending systems, proposes this method for deriving social networking data from conversation threads: Abstract of Measuring ties on online forums…
Tools, software and a taxonomy of available research and visualization tools made available by The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis. Measurement Taxonomy AutoFocus Beluga cflowd CoralReef iffinder Mantra NeTraMet RTG scamper skitter . Anonymization Tools Topology Tools Workload Tools Performance Tools…
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to login to any computer and be able to access all your music, pictures, documents, and passwords to all your social networking services? Well, soon (hopefully) you’ll be able to. This is the whole idea…
Submitted by "Adrienne Hall" on October 22, 2008 to the On-line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2008, Purdue University, Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog. Abstract This essay attempts to begin explaining how participation in online social interactions impacts…
The Apple Iphone Jobs Video. Highlights: Microsoft Exchange and VPN support EBAY interface Loopt support – Location Aware Social Networks: We make serendipity happen Native TypePad support (blogging) Apple – QuickTime – WWDC 2008 Keynote And a list of things Apple…
Now any site can offer custom recommendations to everyone… Pluggable social networking… MyTrybe
A set of API standards straddling the world of social networks… OpenSocial – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Zembly is he masu editor of mashups… Developing Web applications to be used within social networks and numerous other cloud-based structures is becoming more and more de rigueur for the entrepreneurial set. Both on the desktop and on the go, Web users…
Following a story on the Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus Blog I’ve run into YouNoodle.com a social networking site for entrepreneurs and educators. Lots of mashups and some interesting applications. The site still needs some improvement and the communication tools improved,…
I have been reading Jenkins‘ Convergence Culture and I ran into this jungle of Star Wars fan movies: http://www.theforce.net. Noteworthy (according to Jenkins): Evan Mather Although I’ve known of this genre for some time I never realized how many sites and amateur…
Submitted on November 26, 2007, to the On-line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2007, Purdue University, Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog (http://www.matei.org/ithink) Abstract: The widespread expansion of communication technology over the past century has resulted in a marked…
It’s not a joke. Video social networking got religion! GodTube.com
PC MAG list of the new and/or undiscovered Web sites that have grabbed their attention this year. You’ll see a large collection of Web applications and tech sites, excellent blogs, offbeat social networks, and, as always, a handful of addictive Flash games…
What does CIA call Wikipedia? Intellipedia. What does CIA call MySpace? ASpace. What does CIA call delicious? We don’t know yet, but it exists. For sure. CIA has embraced social techologies in a big way, says Financial Times ”Earlier this year, the CIA…
How can we conceptualise the relationship between technological and social change at the local level? More specifically, what conceptual tools have we got at our disposal to study the emergence of new Internet-related forms of local sociality?
Facebook Grows Up: Can It Stay Relevant? – Kaplan College Guide – MSNBC.com Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue – On Tuesday, July 31, Shara Karasics world came to a temporary halt. Facebook was down. She could not follow the fortunes and foibles of…
Citizendium, and a subsidiary initiative which I cooked for it, Eduzendium, got Wired’s eye. The article gives Citizendium a mixed review, thumbs up, thumbs down, but overall positive… On a funny note, the article was produced by Assignment Zero, an initiative I…
Manuel Castells is famous for his triptic “Network Society” in which he summarized the broad hopes for a new (and improved) global society powered by information technology. (While, at the same time, pointing to the weak spots of this techno-driven version of…
Last Christmas when I returned home to Little Rock to celebrate the holidays I had the opportunity to meet Robert Steinbuch, a central figure in a minor Washington sex scandal that may have far reaching implications for how individuals can conduct themselves…
Front Porches and Public Spaces: Planned Communities Online Susan Huelsing Sarapin Comm. 632: Online Interaction Professor: Dr. Sorin Matei November 19, 2006 Introduction Where else today but in the cost-effective frontier of cyberspace can the average person construct a community?1 With widespread…
Just like everything organic or that takes on a life of its own, at some point your online community is going to die. In his book Design for Community, Powazek provides five reasons why communities end and how to handle breaking the…
Last spring I posted about Mydeathspace.com, a web site that tracks the profiles of deceased myspace users. I thought it was interesting that social networking profiles were being adapted to online memorials giving friends and family a place to come online and…
By Susan Huelsing Sarapin Submitted on October 22, 2006 to the On-Line Interaction and Facilitation Seminar, Fall 2006, Purdue University Dr. Sorin A. Matei via the I Think Blog (http://www.matei.org/ithink) Introduction Today, people all over the world are connected, or “tethered†(Turkle,…
What is Elgg? (It’s being used at MIT.) Described by its founders as a ‘learning landscape’, Elgg provides each user with their own weblog, file repository (with podcasting capabilities), an online profile and an RSS reader. Additionally, all of a user’s content…
Codifying Accidental Knowledge (or Cultural/Local Information) One of my major problems as a graduate student was figuring out what I needed to do – where to go – and when I should do it. I got a lot of information from our…
If I understood Gabe correctly, he disagreed with the idea that community necessarily had to involve some level of compulsion or force that the group has over the individual; however, perhaps that is part of the cost of being in a community.…
In his postlogue/added chapter to his book, Rheingold asks whether the use of the “phrase virtual community is a perversion of the notion of community?” (2001, p.325). He then goes on to talk about Clifford Stoll as an example of someone who…
When it comes to the “dilemma of modernityâ€, namely, the tension between individual expression and community spirit (Matei, 2001) all the authors have an opinion on how serious it is and whether it can be resolved. Rheingold in a lengthy postlogue remains…
Larry Sanger wrote a very thoughtful article about the meaning of the wiki movment… I will comment on it in a few days…. Constructing the Digital Universe » Blog Archive » The New Politics of Knowledge The New Politics of Knowledge July…
Connection maps of world locations based on article coocurrence in Google News Buzztracker – World News – 2006-08-03 Buzztracker: World News, Mapped Yesterday | Tomorrow Current World View – 2006-08-03 Today’s Top Locations * Beirut (08%) * Baghdad (07%) * Washington (07%)…
Wikipedia gets the bridal suited at The New Yorker. Full feature article sometime smarmy, sometime fliratious-congratulatory about Wikipedia’s so-so reliability and great potential.” The article touches the ideas, so close to my heart, that although Wikipedia in essence is an exercise in…