The Future of Online Social Networks:

Theories, Hypothesis,…..

Oscar ArdaizOscar.ardaiz@unavarra.es

Esteve Almirall, Ramón Sangüesa{almirall,sanguesa}@lsi.upc.edu

Internet Global Conference, Barcelona, 17-Abril-2007

Today

“Cisco buys Utah Street Networks but not Tribe.net”http://www.blogherald.com/2007/03/06/cisco-buys-utah-street-networks-but-not-tribenet/http://blogs.alianzo.com/redessociales/2007/03/11/cisco-redessociales

“USA Today social redesign - 92% don't like it”http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/03/usa_today_socia.html

Companies runs after contact networks (linkedin, neurona), and friendship networks (friendster, orkut, myspace),…..

Meanwhile ……..

Vizster: Visualizing Soc Nethttp://jheer.org/vizster/ (Univ. California) • egocentric• community• linkage• search• x-ray 1• x-ray 2

Object-Centered Sociality Theory

• The fallacy is to think that social networks are just made up of people. They're not; social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object. (Jyri Engeström, Univ. Helsinki)

• Objects are artifacts of awareness and interaction:– Photos -> you can meet people in Flickr,– Videos -> you can meet people in YouTube,

.

From John Thackara: “In the Bubble. Designing in a Complex World.”From John Thackara: “In the Bubble. Designing in a Complex World.”

CLEANER Community

NCSA

David

Streamflow Analyst

Mary

CHATS WITH

USES

Hydrologic Information

System Status Report

C-U County Hydrologic

Dataset

AFFILIATED WITH

watersheds

EXPERT IN

River Monitoring Systems

Contains as

Keyword

DOWNLOADS

AUTHOR OF

Searches for Keyword Annie

Multidimensional Networks Multiple Types of Nodes and Relationships (N. Contrator, Univ. Illinois)

Small-worldness Structural PropertyLow diameter andhigh clustering:• Somebody you know

knows somebody in Singapour (or anywhere in the world).

Preferential attachment theory:

hub nodes connect many people, but..

local exchange theory: shows variations of link

exchange harness produce different degree distributions.

Central-periphery network Power-law network

Exponential distribution network

Drawings from http://www.lsi.upc.es/~jmpujol/public/papers/thesis.pdf

Conway’s Law: Design Networks

Developers Network

Modules Network

Task Allocation

“Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Law

Tesna Tool (Univ. Twente)• Analyse communication,• Coordinate Allocation in time,• Software structural problems.http://tesnatool.googlepages.com/

Consumer-Provider-Resource Networks

• Recommend resources / provider through social networks.• Reputation of provider / resources obtained from in-links

distributions.• Coallitions of consumers and clusters of providers created

by grouping together nearby nodes.• Viral marketing detecting centrality nodes.

Listeners-Bands-Songs(mystrands.com)

Grid Service users -providers-resources(gridplaza.unavarra.es)

WS Consumer

WS1

WS2

WS3

WS Provider

ASP Provider

WS Consumer

WS Prov.

WS4

“collaborate”“consume”

SN for education

New educational paradigms:• Constructivism (learning by

doing)– Wikis: user created content,

project based learning,...

• Collaborative Learning (learning in groups):– Social networking app: connect

to experts, create groups of interest, determine hub students

MySpace worth $580Millions: “user are university students: Future (& present) high-income consumers, future industry and society leaders” (…stock analyst)

Innovation Networks

• Open vs. Closed innovation model: More opportunities for business and innovation through collaboration, partnerships, licensing, etc.

• Innovation Networks: how knowledge is transferred, which topologies permit innovation diffusion and value creation, how to create shortcuts for wider and fast innovation.

Producer: small, large

The World

Innovator

Media: Mass, Web

Early Adopter

Capitalist

Tomorrow??

“The surest way to add value to a network is to connect it to another network”

(Schrage's Law of Networks)