Advanced Multimodal Frameworks to Support Human-Computer Interaction on Social Computing Environments

In recent years, the growing improvements of the computational capability of the mobile and desktop devices, jointly to the potentialities of the current fast network connections have allowed the wide spread of advanced and complex applications and services belonging to the social computing area. The most current approaches used to interact with this kind of applications and services (hereinafter called social computing environments) do not seem able to provide an effective and exhaustive support to the human-computer interaction process. For this reason, in order to overcome this kind of problems, it is necessary to turn to more suitable interaction methodologies. In this context, human-oriented interfaces can be profitably used to support every kind of social computing environment. More specifically, multimodal interfaces enable users an effortless and powerful communication way to represent concepts and commands on different mobile and desktop devices. This chapter explores the more suitable possibilities to employ multimodal frameworks (and related algorithmic approaches) in order to interact with different kinds of social computing environments.

Using Theoretical Frameworks from the Social Sciences to Understand and Explain Behaviour in Social Computing

Research over the past 15 years has examined how the Internet is being used to support communication and social interaction across a variety of groups and communities. However, much of this research has been exploratory, rather than explanatory. It is argued here that approaches from the social sciences offer established methods and frameworks within which the psychological and social impacts of computing can be addressed. In discussing various theories, the chapter highlights one problem—that individual theories have tended to be used to explain a single aspect of human behaviour. There is a need to think more holistically and search for a theoretical approach that can explain intrapersonal processes (e.g. cognition and emotion) as well as interpersonal behaviour within social computing. A number of theoretical frameworks from the social sciences (e.g. social identity theory and social capital theory) will be discussed as potentially being able to explain psychological processes at all levels for users of social computing applications. In summary, the objectives of this chapter are to discuss current approaches used to explain the way people interact in social computing contexts, identify shortcomings with these and to highlight approaches that can address these shortcomings.

Constructing and Evaluating Social Software

The process of developing interactive systems necessitates designers to have a comprehensive understanding of the needs of the user and the context in which a device or system is to be used. Interactive systems are often designed through a series of iterations, guided by a sequence of evaluations. This chapter describes how the research and development techniques used within the field of Interaction Design (ID), a successor to the field of human-computer interaction, can be used to inform the development and evaluation of social software systems. Particular attention is given to the challenging area of end-user culture and how different evaluation paradigms and techniques can be applied. The chapter concludes by presenting pointers towards a number of international standards and highlighting a number of potentially useful research directions.

Social Networks and Semantics

This chapter discusses the relation between Social Networks and Semantics – two areas that have recently gained a lot of attention from both academia and industry. The authors show how synergies between these two areas can be used to solve concrete problems, and they describe three approaches that demonstrate the potential for interconnecting these technologies. The first approach focuses on the semantic profiling of social networks. More precisely, they study the characteristics of large online social networks through an extensive analysis of over 1.9 million MySpace profiles in an effort to understand who is using these networks and how they are being used. The MySpace study is based on a comparative analysis of three distinct but related facets: the sociability of users in MySpace; the demographic characteristics of MySpace users; and the text artifacts of MySpace users. The second approach to interconnecting social networks and semantics focuses on a solution for mediating between social tagging systems. The Upper Tag Ontology (UTO) is proposed to integrate social tagging data by mediating between related social metadata schemes. The chapter discusses how UTO data can be linked with other social metadata (e.g., FOAF, DC, SIOC, SKOS), how to crawl and cluster tag data from major social tagging systems, and how to integrate data using UTO. The third approach discusses the use of social semantics to qualitatively improve the task of service ranking. The authors explore the idea of using social annotation technologies for ranking web services and show how such an approach can be implemented using information provided by Delicious, one of the largest social networks.

Enhancing Productivity through Social Computing

This chapter posits that social computing applications, when appropriately combined, provide opportunities to facilitate organizational communication and collaboration, and ultimately, to enhance productivity. The authors illustrate this view by discussing ongoing work and initial experiences with the development and deployment of a number of social computing concepts and platforms. They particularly focus on the confluence of social bookmarking and social networks to enhance productivity in academic settings, as well as on the use of social networks for coordinating and managing group projects. They also discuss how social networks in immersive environments can result in opportunities for learning and training that may have a positive impact on productivity. They developed social computing prototypical applications for each of the areas they are exploring. Based upon observation of users and feedback obtained from them, they conclude that it is possible and desirable to take advantage of the collaborative nature of social computing applications so that participants engage in productive activities for the benefit of their organizations.

Social Computing

This chapter investigates instances of social computing and the affordances it offers enterprise social networking. Employing a thematic synthesis approach, it argues that social computing in the form of blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and virtual worlds serves as an ideal platform that enterprises can tap into for enterprise social networking purposes. In addition, the chapter explores the way in which social computing can help enterprises leverage the relationship economy inherent in enterprise social networking. Against this background, the chapter provides, first, an overview of social computing and enterprise social networking. Second, it characterises, using examples of real world applications obtained through thematic synthesis, how enterprises can exploit instances of social computing cited above to extract business benefits from them. Third, it outlines how enterprises can harness the relationship economy, Value 2.0 and Prosumerism 2.0 to enhance their brand image and boost their online presence. Fourth, it presents caveats regarding how terms such as enterprise social networking, wikinomics, collective intelligence, relationship economy, Prosumerism 2.0 and Value 2.0 may degenerate into mantras. Fifth and last, the chapter delineates future trends likely to characterise enterprise social computing.

Cultural and International Aspects of Social Media

Social software provides powerful tools for people to communicate and interact. Social software networks are popular around the world but there are many differences between tools, functions and their use. The international application of these global tools even bears the risk of misunderstandings between individuals. This article discusses differences between social software from various countries concerning design, functions, use, opinion expression and the perception of social capital. First, a theoretical culture model is presented to provide one potential framework for the analysis. Subsequently, the relation between culture and information technology is explored. In particular, user interfaces need to be adapted to national preferences and cognitive styles. The influence of culture on social networks is then discussed for several aspects of social media.

From Real to Virtual and Back Again

Researchers and practitioners alike have speculated that virtual social worlds and social gaming will likely be major platforms for business operations in the future. This chapter shows how major IT companies make use of virtual social worlds (esp. the online application Second Life), focusing on the examples of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, International Business Machines (IBM) and Microsoft. Specifically, the authors investigate whether and how corporate presences within Second Life can be used as platforms to distribute Real Life products and services, so-called virtual commerce (v-Commerce). They show that although the four firms included in our analysis all have a different perspective on the potential of virtual social worlds, each of them made an active and conscious choice about how to use this medium. With regard to v-Commerce, their results indicate that although the short-term profit potential of this form of distribution is still limited, Second Life residents perceive the idea of buying products through in-world stores as positive and exciting. Based on these results, they derive a set of key insights regarding the business potential of virtual social worlds, consumers’ reactions towards corporate presences within Second Life, and advice for firms planning to enter this type of application.

Social Computing and the New Market

Social computing has revolutionized the way individuals connect with one another and manage their personal lives. The technology has launched billionaire entrepreneurs and influenced presidential elections. For businesses the same technology has meant a revolution in online marketing. Different types of social computing applications offer different opportunities for marketing, but all relate to the opportunity for companies to improve their connections with current and potential customers. This chapter will explore both the history of marketing and social computing and how the two fields have come together to revolutionize online marketing today.

Using Web 2.0 Social Computing Technologies to Enhance the Use of Information Systems in Organizations

In the perspective of managing the Intellectual Capital (IC), the user friendliness of User Generated Content (UGC) tools may be preferred over the Information Systems platforms offered in the majority of organizations. Based on a review of literature and actual practices, this chapter focuses on aspects related to user practices of social networks and web tools that could be useful for corporate platforms; its aim is to improve the use of corporate platforms by informing both the research academy and managers about effective practices. Case studies are presented to understand how UGC can be used to implement new ways of sharing information and communicating more efficiently in organizations. Knowledge and IC management systems for teaching and learning are presented, in order to better assess whether or not this technology is effective to support knowledge creation and sharing in an academic and business setting.