Social Networks & Social Research

How are social networks and social network sites being used by researchers? Guest lecture in Hanson’s COM529 class. [Two addenda!]

Not in the slides — but don’t forget email lists and blog posts/comments!

Screen capture of Twhirl.

Links from the presentation (and a couple that I may have forgotten!)

• CrowdStatus
• Gridjit
• GroupTweet
• LinkedIn Blog
• Online Journalism Blog
• PicoBuzz
• PollDaddy
• Quotably.com
• Snitter
• Summize.com/about
• TweetBurner
• TweetClouds
• TweetScan
• Twhirl
• Twitter.Alltop.com
• TwitterFeed
• TwittUrly
• TwitterVerse
• TwitterWiki
• The WallTweet Journal

Other Resources:

• Clay Shirky’s talk at Web 2.0 (mp4)
• Twitter HashTags for emergency coordination and disaster relief
• Using twitter as a research tool

Addendum 1
Hanson suggested I talk about Twitter genres, something I blogged about last month. Read the post and tell me what you think!

I also have an evolving Twitter resources page.

Addendum 2
After a quick look at y’alls tweets, I can see that most are clearly in Genre (1) ! And (almost) no one seems to be using @screenname to talk directly to folks. Why?

Hanson suggested I recommend people to follow on Twitter. Here goes a list of people/orgs to consider (alpha order – I know most of these people).

• Scott Beale – BayAreaTechie. Laughing Squid is a hosting company and “an online resource for art, culture & technology” – Scott is also known for his photography. Moderately high volume; Scott would be my #2 if I were going to follow only two high volume Tweet-ers.
• David Cohn – journo
• Dan Gillmor – journo
• Guy Kawasaki – startUps/former Apple evangelist. If I were to follow only one high-volume poster, it would be Guy, and not because of his Apple connection!
• JD Lasica – journo/educator
• Mindy McAdams – journo/educator
• Chris Pirillo – techGeek. Another high volume poster; Seattle.
• Howard Rheingold – author/educator (Smart Mobs)
• Steve Rubel – organizational communications, impact of digital technologies, marketing & PR. Very good signal-to-noise ratio
• Robert Scoble – commGeek. 2nd most popular person on Twitter; recommend reading blog over Tweets because of @ volume (lots of noise)
• Evan Williams – founder.

• Arstechnica – newsfeed Excellent.
• BBC – news feed
• Breaking News Alerts – online breaking news
• DowningStreet – British PM
• NextNewsRoom – Next News Room project (education)
• NewsTools2008 – example of a conference feed (check it out, the conference ended Fri). “The Journalism That Matters collaborative [curates] NewsTools2008 at Yahoo”
• NY Times – news feed
• Barack Obama – watch how a political campaign is using Twitter
• Seattle Weather
• TechMeme – news feed. Excellent.