In this work we examine the characteristics of social activity and patterns of communication on Twitter, a prominent example of the emerging class of communication systems we call “social awareness streams. ” We use system data and message content from over 350 Twitter users, applying human coding and quantitative analysis to provide a deeper understanding of the activity of individuals on the Twitter network. In particular, we develop a content-based categorization of the type of messages posted by Twitter users, based on which we examine users ’ activity. Our analysis shows two common types of user behavior in terms of the content of the posted messages, and exposes differences between users in respect to these activities.

People often turn to their friends, families, and colleagues when they have questions. The recent, rapid rise of online social networking tools has made doing this on a large scale easy and efficient. In this paper we explore the phenomenon of using social network status messages to ask questions. We conducted a survey of 624 people, asking them to share the questions they have asked and answered of their online social networks. We present detailed data on the frequency of this type of question asking, the types of questions asked, and respondents ‟ motivations for asking their social networks rather than using more traditional search tools like Web search engines. We report on the perceived speed and quality of the answers received, as well as what motivates people to respond to questions seen in their friends ‟ status messages. We then discuss the implications of our findings for the design of next-generation search tools. Author Keywords Social search, social networks, Q&A, Web search.

Privacy practices in social network sites often appear paradoxical, as content-sharing behavior stands in conflict with the need to reduce disclosure-related harms. In this study we explore privacy in social network sites as a contextual information practice, managed by a process of boundary regulation. Drawing on a sample survey of undergraduate Facebook users, we examine a particular privacy-enhancing practice: having a friends-only Facebook profile. Particularly, we look at the association between network composition, expectancy violations, interpersonal privacy practices and having a friends-only profile. We find that expectancy violations by weak ties and increased levels of interpersonal privacy management are positively associated with having a friends-only profile. We conclude with a discussion of how these findings may be integrated into the design of systems to facilitate interaction while enhancing individual privacy. Author Keywords Social network sites, social networking, Facebook, privacy,

There have been many location sharing systems developed over the past two decades, and only recently have they started to be adopted by consumers. In this paper, we present the results of three studies focusing on the foursquare check-in system. We conducted interviews and two surveys to understand, both qualitatively and quantitatively, how and why people use location sharing applications, as well as how they manage their privacy. We also document surprising uses of foursquare, and discuss implications for design of mobile social services. Author Keywords foursquare, mobile computing, social computing, check-in, privacy, location based service, uses and gratifications

We investigate regrets associated with users ’ posts on a popular social networking site. Our findings are based on a series of interviews, user diaries, and online surveys involving 569 American Facebook users. Their regrets revolved around sensitive topics, content with strong sentiment, lies, and secrets. Our research reveals several possible causes of why users make posts that they later regret: (1) they want to be perceived in favorable ways, (2) they do not think about their reason for posting or the consequences of their posts, (3) they misjudge the culture and norms within their social circles, (4) they are in a “hot ” state of high emotion when posting, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, (5) their postings are seen by an unintended audience, (6) they do not foresee how their posts could be perceived by people within their intended audience, and (7) they misunderstand or misuse the Facebook platform. Some reported incidents had serious repercussions, such as breaking up relationships or job losses. We discuss methodological considerations in studying negative experiences associated with social networking posts, as well as ways of helping users of social networking sites avoid such regrets.

Social media has the potential to foster interactions between policy makers, government officials, and their constituencies. Opportunities to receive feedback from residents, inform them of government-provided opportunities, and increase engagement with the governance process have all been proposed as ways social media can play a role in Governance 2.0. However, the ability to realize these potential benefits faces inherent barriers in terms of perceptions of social media, ability of administrators to make effective use of social media tools, and the design of software used to operationalize social media. In this paper, we provide a case study of an attempt to use social media to engage with stakeholders, the AdvanceMichigan project, and discuss the various factors that hindered the success of that project. Key Words: social media, crowdsourcing.

The following paper discusses the experiences of a seven week mini project run twice at the University of Sunderland, designed to teach applied web programming using the Facebook platform and makes the case for the use of Facebook as a suitable platform to teach web programming. First year undergraduate computing students used a broad range of technologies underpinned by a suitable software engineering methodology to design, develop and publish applications to the Facebook Application Directory. Students are able to market and deploy applications easily and benefit from feedback from peers within a familiar, student friendly environment. There is an opportunity to engage with a wider audience and opportunities to develop and refine software development skills whilst consolidating their learning in a challenging project that is accessible to anyone with a Facebook account.

We analyze the dynamics of the behavior known as ‘unfollow’ in Twitter. We collected daily snapshots of the online relationships of 1.2 million Korean-speaking users for 51 days as well as all of their tweets. We found that Twitter users frequently unfollow. We then discover the major factors, including the reciprocity of the relationships, the duration of a relationship, the followees ’ informativeness, and the overlap of the relationships, which affect the decision to unfollow. We conduct interview with 22 Korean respondents to supplement the quantitative results. They unfollowed those who left many tweets within a short time, created tweets about uninteresting topics, or tweeted about the mundane details of their lives. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first systematic study of the unfollow behavior in Twitter.

Digital social media have transformed how we communicate and manage our relationships. Despite its portability, sketching as a social medium has been largely left behind. Given sketching’s unique affordances for visual communication this absence is a real loss. Sketches convey visuo-spatial ideas directly, require minimal detail to render concepts, and show the peculiarities of handwriting. Sketching holds the promise to enrich how we communicate, and its ubiquity is critical for sharing information at opportune moments. We present the results of an exploratory field study of ubiquitous sketching for social media, documenting users ’ experiences with UbiSketch. This system integrates digital pens, paper, and mobile phones to support the transmission of paper sketches to online services. We learned that UbiSketch enabled participants to leverage sketching’s unique affordances, that ubiquitous sketching creates a synergy with the practice of posting context-dependent information, and that it broadens and deepens social interaction.

Abstract. Facebook and Twitter have changed the way we consume information, allowing the people we follow to become our “social filters ” and determine the content of our information stream. The capability to discover the individuals a user is most interested in following has therefore become an important aspect of the struggle against information overflow. We argue that the people users are most interested in following are not necessarily those with whom they are most familiar. We compare these two types of social relationships – interest and familiarity – inside IBM. We suggest inferring interest relationships from users ’ public interactions on four enterprise social media applications. We study these interest relationships through an offline analysis as well as an extensive user study, in which we combine people-based and content-based evaluations. The paper reports a rich set of results, comparing various sources for implicit interest indications; distinguishing between content-related activities and status or network updates, showing that the former are of more interest; and highlighting that the interest relationships include very interesting individuals that are not among the most familiar ones, and can therefore play an important role in social stream filtering, especially for content-related activities.