Just over ten years have passed since a Harvard University student laid the foundations for what, today, is the network almost automatically associated with the expression “social network”: Facebook.
M. Zuckerberg, the now former student and new millionaire, managed to become the spokesperson and interpreter of the social dimension of the web. In a relatively short time, especially when compared with the hundreds of thousands of years humanity needed to introduce technologies such as ironworking, this helped drive an enormous and widespread adoption of computers and, more specifically, of the web.
Facebook, however, can be considered only one use case of the broader concept of social media, which has taken many different forms depending on users’ areas of interest. These range from integrated networks similar to Facebook, such as Google Plus, to networks of expert users who collaborate to build knowledge, such as Wikipedia and its many wiki derivatives, or to answer questions from less experienced users, such as the Stack Exchange community. There are also networks dedicated to short messages, such as Twitter, and networks more specifically oriented toward science.
Among the latter, we can mention:
- Mendeley.com, a community that allows users to share and catalogue their scientific publications, including through free downloadable cataloguing software
- ResearchGate and Academia, two social networks that, similarly to Facebook, allow users to share updates and add personal information, especially about their scientific career and CV.
I will discuss the collaborative opportunities offered by social media, exploring the following points in upcoming posts:
what a social network is
the social reasons behind the success of social networks (from now on, SNs)
the technological reasons behind their success
the new wealth introduced by social networks: data and streams
In a few days, we will start with the first two sections: what social networks are and the social reasons for their success. Stay tuned.
For any questions, leave a comment below.