SNA in managerial field

SNA is described as a study of the pattern of interaction between actors within a social network. It mainly focus on the social actor and the relationship between actors. Until now, SNA is still in an early stage and the value of it is still blurred for us. In this blog, a real life application will be discussed in managerial field.

In our common sense, the hierarchical structure within a company is prescribed according to the executive positions. However, this is just the dominant formal structure. There is also a recessive one constituted by the informal relationship between people. To analyze and understand this informal structure will be of great use in management.

A survey carried out by IBM indicates that when people need to learn some new tech, they are more likely to turn to their friends and colleagues instead of the boring book or database. Although the knowledge from the database will be more accurate and comprehensive, people are more willingly to seek help from other people. In the survey of IBM, the knowledge sharing within a company can be classified by four layers. 

a. Knowledge. People knows what and who is working on what.

b. Access. Directly acquire needed knowledge from others.

c. Engagement. Improve the tech, ability and knowledge by communication.

d. Safety. Through the communication and interaction, the reliance and safety between people are built.

The ecosystem of knowledge is formed by these methods. SNA in this field will help us to understand how people convey ideas, share information and form new techs within a certain group of people. Based on the analyze, the manager acquires a new scope to discover the bottleneck, mistake and also get a new and efficient way to manage.

Actually, the knowledge sharing is only one tiny function provided by social network within a company. Broadly speaking, through SNA in the informal network within a company can also help the manger to 1) Choose the leader. To find out who is more reliable and respected by others. 2) Form a team. To find out the actual link between the company. 3) Merger and acquisition. To figure out the culture between two departments or companies. These application of SNA in managerial field will definitely improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a department or even the whole company.

As the SNA is still in the early stage, the applications of it is now limited. But the future of it is firmly unlimited!

Cloud computing in social networks and assignment in lecture 6

First, we have to find out what is cloud computing. Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). It means that the end user can get remote services by providing data to the server without doing all the complicated work using the local computer. This significantly reduces the computation load of local computer and more importantly it saves time for users!

A technical innovation always brings a new market. The emerge of cloud computing also provides enormous chance for IT field, such as the rise of Google. Cloud environments typically provide low level abstractions of computation or storage. Computation and Storage Clouds are complementary and act as building blocks from which high level service Clouds and mash-ups can be created. Storage Clouds are often used to extend the capabilities of storage-limited devices such as phones and desktops, and provide transparent access to data from anywhere.

Social network is just a model taking the advantages of cloud computing. It uses the trust relationships between friends as a foundation of data and services. And we take facebook as an example.

It indicates that if the users register Cloud services and their friends can then able to provision and use these resources through the Social Cloud Facebook application. The number of applications of cloud computing in social network will be increasing rapidly. Believe it or not, these kind of applications will finally change our life!

During the lecture 6, we have two assignments in class, an individual one and a group one according to a reading material.

Here I will share my answers of these questions (group work):

1)      What is the definition of Social Cloud?

A Social Cloud is a resource and service sharing framework utilizing relationships established between members of a social network.

2)      What are the possible applications of a Social Cloud?

The applications can be classified into five aspects shown as below:

1. A Social Computation Cloud: such as Onlive.com, web-based email service.
2. A Social Storage Cloud: such as SkyDrive by Microsoft. 3. A Social Collaborative Cloud: such as GOOGLE Docs. 4. A Social Cloud for Public Science: such as Wikipedia. 5. An Enterprise Social Cloud: such as Moodle@CUHK.

3)      What was the epistemic aims in (1) Class Activity One (individual work) and (2) Class Activity Two (group work)? Is there any change in epistemic aim? If so, why did you change your aims?

In the individual work, we aim at find out the answer from the reading material which is just in a metacognition level. While in the group work, we aim at discuss the problems and achieve more comprehensive and integrate ideas. We convey our ideas and improve our solutions by absorbing others’ opinion. This process make the understanding become real knowledge and that’s why we change our aims.

4)      Are there any differences in terms of individual and group epistemic cognition, how?

I think the answer is yes, there are some differences between them. The epistemic cognition of group might be more comprehensive and diverse than the individual one. You might have some limitation when solving a problem. But when it comes to group work, this shortage might be eliminated easily. That’s why you can always learn from your teammates.

5)      How did you approach to the problem individually and in group, respectively? Are there any differences in the processes involved?

In the individual work, I approach to the problem only by searching the reading material and my own experience. While in the group work, the opinions from my teammates make my answer more comprehensive and accurate.

The "power" of ANONYMITY

In the last two lecture, we mainly focused on Psychology and Cognition in Online networks. We have mentioned about how the social networks influence our behaviors and cognition. In this blog, one interesting phenomenon called Cyber Disinhibition will be further discussed.


So, What is Cyber Disinhibition? It refers to a loosening (or complete abandonment) of social restrictions and inhibitions that would otherwise be present in normal face-to-face interaction during interactions with others on the Internet.  Without inhibition, people may become more willing to comment and more offensive.

Sometimes, when I was reading news through some websites, I always found people arguing in the comment below. A group of people holding one opinion attacked others with different thoughts with violent words.  This situation sometimes even worse. People who participated in the argument may not care what the argument is really about. They just want to curse as they cannot do in their real life. Why are these unusual behavior happen? What's behind these phenomenon? 

ANONYMITY. You don't know me and you can't see me. We can comment in the forum by a pseudo name or account. We register these accounts only by email address meaning that you  can not track the real persons behind these accounts. Without worried about punishment and reprisal, people become more brave. They don't have to control their emotions and be responsible for their words as in the face-to-face interaction.

ASYNCHRONICITY. In online networks, people not always communicate in real time. For instance, when we make blog comment, the blog writer may see your comment within several minutes or after several days. This asynchronous nature also provides people courage to speak negative words.

Due to these characters, a group of people called the Internet Ghost Writers or the Army of Water appears in the internet.

They are employed by some organizations aims at helping people to attract attentions and making uniform comments for special purposes. Here is an example of what they actually do in social networks.

The Cyber Disinhibition seems to leading a bad tendency in online networks. How can we solve the negative impact it brings to us? Obviously, it needs us to control our emotion and behavior when surfing the internet. To purify the online environment, it still a long way to go and it requires the efforts of everyone.

REFERENCE: 

• online disinhibition effect  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_disinhibition_effect  

The Social Networking arise (an overview of social media marketing)

No one can estimate the great power of social networking when it emerged ten years ago. Just like Bill Gates cannot predict the RAM of computer nowadays is million times than what he has said 640Kb 30 years ago. But we do realize the power of social networking these years. Weibo currently has over 300 million users and Renren has already attracted over 200 million people. The social networking with such huge amount of users undoubtedly attract lots of companies to  display and advertise their products in a new way.

Social media marketing is based on information sharing between users. Companies can create their contents in SNS websites to attract attentions and encourage users to spread out  their comments and experience through their social networks instead of using traditional advertisement. With the rapid development of smartphone and information technology, people can easily access to social networks in any place at any time. It not only provides the technical support but more importantly raises a refreshing new customer experience.  

Compared to the traditional advertisement, social media marketing have these advantages:

• Passive to active：Instead on being shown the advertisements through TV and paper, customers can now search the contents they want through social media.
• More reliable: To trust the advertisements produced by companies or to trust the information shared by their friends? The answer can be easily estimated. 
• More efficient: For companies, especially for those small enterprises, charges of advertisement can be a huge cost. Therefore, social media marketing is more suitable. Moreover, through social networks, companies can get more feedback from customers to adjust their products and find out the potential customers as well.

Here is an example of how social media marketing works.  (http://www.douguo.com/) 

This website provides users a platform to share can share their experience to make delicious food and opinion on how to form a healthy diet menu.

Moreover, users can write food diaries to discuss and give comments to restaurants. The users will be recommended some restaurants according to their locations and eating habits.
    





The social media marketing put forward on a new way to convey information between customers and also a new method for companies to communicate with customers. This is only the beginning. A time for social media marketing is coming. Let's witness the Social Networking arise.


REFERENCE           

• Social media marketing  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_marketing    
• 豆果网  http://www.douguo.com