Reflections on a Web 2.0 Conference – Part Two: Knowledge Generation

As noted in the previous entry, many of the presentations given at the conference dealt with usage of specific Web 2.0 websites. Facebook was definitely a hot topic, but also MySpace, Flickr and YouTube. Second Life was also represented, mostly in context with e-learning environments. While many presented basic descriptive analyses of the technology and the potential behind them, there were a few which had substantial analysis of specific aspects of particular sites or technology.

There were four presentations that really stuck out for me. One which had to do with mobile phone software, one which spoke to lateral survelliance on Facebook, one which was a content analysis of YouTube pregnancy and childbirth videos and one which was a pure quantitative analysis of social networking linkages.

Marcus Foth’s presentation, “Transferring Web 2.0 Paradigms to a Mobile System of Social Navigation in Public Inner-City Places” was based on a mobile phone software called “City Flocks” which attempts to combine personal narratives and experience with tourist type applications of urban navigation.

Basically the software works like this. People signed up to be “experts” on locations within an city, and gave ratings and commented on those locations. For example, restaurants or clubs or coffeehouses. Users could then search particular keywords and review what the local experts had said about the different locations. Not only could they review the ratings and comments, but if a user wanted a comment expanded on, they could click on the expert’s comment and actually telephone them for more information or clarification.

He spoke about potentially turning this into a Facebook application, where previous user preferences could also be incorporated into the search results, potentially leading to the ultimate application for the personalised tourist experience, based on local knowledge rather than the Lonely Planet tourist guide. I see a lot of potential for this. I can even relate my own experience in London, where I was fortunate enough to have friends show me around the city, taking me to those hidden nooks and crannies that I would not have found otherwise, but related to my personal atmospheric preferences.

Daniel Trottier presented in the same session that I did. His topic was one near and dear to my own heart… Facebook and surveillance. His presentation was titled, “Lateral Surveillance and Social Networking Sites: The Case of Facebook.” Taking an approach that I had never quite consider before in great detail, the surveillance of everyone by everyone… or for those of us who like jargon… ubiquitous surveillance.

While Daniel carefully avoided the topic of Big Brother, or the panoptic potential of Facebook… his presentation sparked the question in my mind, when everybody is spying on everybody else, is there really a need for the central watcher? He showed a great little video clip about how easy the News Feed Feature of Facebook made it for stalkers. It was a cheeky video, but highlighted the creepiness of potential peeping CyberToms.

The whole notion of ubiquitous surveillance reared its head later on my trip as the disquieting “Tube” voice in London told me on numerous occasions to be on alert for and report any suspicious behaviour that I might observe with my fellow Tube riders… but the Orwellian feel of London is a topic for another time.

Perhaps the most thought provoking presentation given was the one cleverly noted as “Pregnancy 2.0″ or “Eyes on You: Analyzing User Generated Content for Social Science” given by the lovely Chiara Fonio for her team which included Fabio Giglietto and Stefano Pedrioli.

Just when I thought that nothing could shock me on the topic of Web 2.0, Chiara presents a content analysis of 150 YouTube videos of ultrasounds, and birthing and pregnancy videos. It really shouldn’t surprise me that people are uploading videos of their c-sections and home births… it shouldn’t surprise me that some people are creating elaborate videos of the whole of their pregnancy (save for the conception part, which may be coming yet) and birth and into the first few months of the infants lives.

The comparison was made to the Jim Carey movie, The Truman Show. “Where Truman was adopted by a corporation, these babies are being adopted by the YouTube Community.” Bizarre, bizarre.

I said to Chiara after her presentation, it would be really interesting to try to do a longitudinal study on these YouTube babies… how much of their lives would be documented? Would they be on SNSs like Facebook a lot sooner? Would they despise their parents for making a public spectacle of their birth? Or would they themselves forward the link to their friends and co-workers?

Eyes on You was solely a content analysis, none of the parents or users were contacted… it would be interesting to know from the parents point of view who the intended audience was for the videos. I suspect they uploaded it to share with friends and family… I wonder how any of them would feel to know that their birth movies were included in an academic presentation and showed on a huge screen to an audience of 25+, all of which looking wide-eyed with jaw agape wondering what on earth would possess someone to expose so much of such an intimate experience.

That perhaps was the kicker for me. Especially since we here in North America tend to be very protective of our children and particularly infants. To expose those who are not even of this earth yet to such a public display is bizarre to me. Though, at the same time, I have autism clips of my own children uploaded to YouTube, so perhaps I should not be so judgmental.

The final presentation which I am going to comment on here was Mike Thelwall’s quantitative analysis of hyperlinking among and between Social Networking Sites, the title credited in the conference program is “How do General Social Networking Sites Embed in the Web”.

I was fortunate enough to get a copy of the paper from Mike.  It was really an interesting analysis.  Basically, he counted number of hyperlinks to the top 20 most trafficked social networking sites to find out where the links were coming from.  In this, as he explained, he showed how Web 2.0 sites are actually layering on top of Web 1.0 traditional-style websites.

He also looked at the predominant domains which were associated with the SNS links.  Some were fairly obvious (such as most websites that linked to MySpace with .com and most websites that linked to Facebook were .edu) but, the really interesting one came from a SNS that I had never even heard of before called “blackplanet.com” which is apparently a SNS predominantly for African-Americans.  Very, very interestingly… well to me anyway… most links to blackplanet.com were coming from .edu websites.  Perhaps blackplanet.com is a place where African-American students are organizing and interacting.  It is refreshing to know… Facebook and MySpace are pretty “white”, but perhaps the African-American students and youth are opting for a platform of their own.

Another really interesting tidbit that came of of Mike’s paper was the “co-inlink structure of social networking sites” where the strongest linkages were seen between MySpace and Live Journal.  This was not really surprising to me, as I’ve observed the blogging community on MySpace to often overlap with Live Journal in my personal interaction with the MySpace blogsphere.  Facebook and MySpace also had a strong co-inlink structure, as did MySpace with Friendster and Xanga.

So that is my “Best of” synopsis.  For more on the Conference and Presentations given there, check out the York 2.0 page which links to a lot of different resources.  Or, you can just go check out Ismael Peña-López’s ICTology blog for many more overviews of the presentations given.