Social Networking from an IE perspective

Social Networking from an IE perspective

This is the last blog of this semester, and it is interesting that the title of this blog is the same as that of our first blog. So I think maybe it is the time for us to rethink what we have learnt from our class, and the time for harvest.

From a perspective of engineering, I think I should like the last three lectures, because there finally appear many mathematic formulas! OK, I am just kidding.

When it comes to what I know about Social Networking that I do not know before, I think I can divide the topic into three parts:

1.       About social tasks and social media

In the second lecture I got to know that a social task is a larger view of collaborative work in a social network. I think I like the word ‘collaboration’, it sounds like that all people work together, share together to reach a common team goal, and it is a word that sounds the most potent and inspiring.

Social media can be Facebook, Twitter or something like that. The topic that I most interested in is social media marketing. Social media marketing is mainly about information sharing, and I think the most attractive point about it is that we may feel that we know the product better and we are closer to the product.

2.       About psychology and cognition

Social psychology is about the understanding of individual behavior in a social context. And I think the individual behavior in a social context is related to the cognition of an individual, because an individual firstly perceive the environment and then the perception contributed to the basis for further processing. All the above are about human cognition.

3.       About security and privacy issues

Everyone involved in social network is concerned about security and privacy issues, however,   challenges to security and privacy is also about the user population’s lack of awareness. It is interesting, right? So we should learn to protect ourselves in social network platform.  

Social Networking in Marketing

Social Networking in Marketing

Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling that product or service. In another word, it can be advertising for selling.

Traditional advertising approaches are advertisements on television, radio or newspaper. Generally speaking, when you want to buy something and there are so many choices that you don’t know which one to buy, you will definitely buy the one you are most familiar with. At that time the power of marketing appears: if you have seen an advertisement of some product before, you are more likely to buy the one you have seen the advertisement before. In this case, an advertisement is the stimulus event and individual firstly perceive it; next the perceiver needs to encode and interpret this perception. For instance, if an advertisement is so funny that it makes a costumer laugh, then the costumer will have an initial memory of the product. When it comes to so many choices and he/she don’t which to buy, and he/she sees the product that he/she saw the advertisement before, then prior knowledge stored in memory is retrieved and it will leads to a behavioral response, that is he will buy the one he have saw an advertisement before.

A new form of advertising that is growing rapidly is social network advertising. It is online advertising with a focus on social networking sites. A blog can be a good channel for social media marketing, when it allows the company to have a transparent platform wherein the customer is able to interact with the company and learn more about the company(in another word, company can advertise within a specific crowd who are interested in their products). Friendertising is another way of social network advertising. Let me take Candy Crush for instance, individuals need lollipops to open a level of the game. There are two ways to achieve a lollipop: buy one or advertise the game to eight of your friends on social platform. It is a wonderful style of marketing, because either way can make profit for the company. Besides the advertisement from the one we are familiar with is a more precise advertising term in which people are able to direct advertisements toward others directly using social network services.

Social network advertising is a relatively immature market, but it has shown a lot of promise as advertisers are able to take advantage of the demographic information the user has provided to the social networking site.

Epistemic Cognition in Online Collaboration

Last week we have attended two class activities (individual study and group study) which both require us to find out the definition of Semantic Web and the possible applications of it in Online Social Networks. These two class activities help us to understand the epistemic cognition in both individual setting and online collaboration better.

In class activity one, firstly I just tried to find out some main points in the article for answering the given question. At this stage my epistemic aim is minimally justified belief because I was ‘copying’ other people’s knowledge. However, when I tried to do so, I find that I couldn’t even generate a throughout understanding of the article because there are many professional and technological words, so I did some online research to enhance my understanding of the article, at that time my epistemic aim became the level two: propositional knowledge.

In class activity two, we shared what we have acquired in activity one and discussed with our group mates. By discussing we find that we all have different concerns about the topic and we all have influence on others’ understanding of the Semantic Web. Finally we understood the content much better and have reached the level four: knowledge construction or co-construction.

Obviously, there are differences between individual and group epistemic cognition. As I have talked before, the level of epistemic aim and value of group is higher than that of individual; and the structure of knowledge and the sources of knowledge of group are much more complex than that of individual. For the epistemic virtues and vices, I think when individual is involved in a group, he/she always tend to make sure what he/she share is correct. However, when one is doing an individual study, he/she will not that care about that. 

Briefly Talking aboutSocial Network

When it comes to the topic what is the social network. I think we can discuss the problem by dividing ‘social network’ into ‘social’ and ‘network’. The term network means a set of relationships. For example, the electrical network is an interconnection of electrical elements, where the interconnection is the relationship of electrical elements. In my opinion, the difference between a social network and an electrical network is the interaction of individuals in a social network. So here we come to the definition of the term ‘social’. From my aspect, the term social refers to the interaction of actors. The interaction of actors is by sharing, communication and collaboration through social media. So all in all, the term ‘social network’ means that actors build a set of relationships by interacting each others.

Before lectures by Prof. Chan, I may mainly consider social network as the communication among friends. Such as we chat by QQ, or we share what we like by RENREN, which is just for entertainment. Now I know that social network can be used for entertainment, but it is much more than entertainment. Let me take co-authoring as an example. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that everyone can edit, is an essential source of knowledge on the Internet now. In Wikipedia, people also share what they have known like what we do in RENREN, but Wikipedia makes the sharing become knowledge in system. In another word, people collaborate to write an encyclopedia by sharing what they have known. Thanks to the collaboration, the information in Baidu Zhidao(something that like the Wikipedia ) is always the latest and exhaustive.

What I want to know about social network is that since social network is mainly about sharing, communication and collaboration, how to ensure our security and privacy in social network. What’s more, I’d like to learn something more about psychology in social network.