IT IS UNOFFICIALLY OVER.
I’m done writing my Master Thesis. The subject is Attention and Participation in the social Web.
A subject, which interested me in several posts of mine in this blog, as some of you might have noticed. A question, that is in every blogger’s mind:
When there are so many blogs out there, how do I get attention to my blog?
And I don’t mean, these “33 Ways to increase your blog traffic”. I find these posts very useful, don’t misunderstand me. They are speaking from experience. But, my main point in this thesis was to approach these questions more…well…scientifically.
My Problems
The issue, that occured to me while writing was, that many disciplines are involved in understanding and decoding the blogosphere and social networks in general: Sociology, social psychology, mass psychology, network theory, emergence, media studies.
Due to limited time (and pages), I had (and have) the feeling that I approached each discipline only at the surface. That before getting deeper into a subject, I got out and continued with another. I didn’t get to the core of each field. I saw each study, only from the perspective of attentiveness. Logical you might assume, since any other approach would abstract me from my main subject. But, still it is a worry I have.
The Wikilutions
That’s why (before presenting the thesis to my professors), I’m giving it to the public. So that everyone can read it, see how this whole network works and give something back.
It would be absolutely selfish to just give a pdf document of the thesis and simply asking for feedback. It is of course an option (you can download the *pdf here), but primarily it is about interaction. So I have uploaded the whole thesis as a wiki.
The purpose of the wiki is twofold.
- to create a database, explaining in ’scientifical terms’ the functions and structure of social networks.
- to invite people from different disciplines to add to the project.
Read and Participate
- So if you’re the reading/printing type of guy: download the thesis as pdf here.
- If you’re more the participate/write/critic type of guy: join the wiki community here.
Your feedback and contribution will be highly appreciated
Micha responded on 16 Jan 2008 at 10:00 pm #
And what are the consequences of the acion? Will you hand in the community version or the PDF version as it is now?
What happens if I delete evereything?
sofiasot responded on 16 Jan 2008 at 10:11 pm #
ooh, sigxaritiria agapite. eiste sxedon mastoras…. !
robojiannis responded on 17 Jan 2008 at 1:18 am #
@ Micha
Well, if you delete the whole wiki, couple of things will happen:
1. I have a backup and probably will restore it. I also keep a weekly backup, so I will restore the data other people have customized.
2. You will teach me a very good lesson, about openness in the web. It is just a mean act, with no reason. I trust, the community of the wiki (any wiki) will make it better.
Paul M. Banas responded on 17 Jan 2008 at 1:58 am #
An incredible amount of thinking and depth here. I’ll need much more time to fully digest.
One quick question re: blogs and your thoughts behind attention growth. Which is stronger, seniority or quality? Does the nature of hyperlinks support a long history of posting, irregardless of quality, over a shorter history of well thought out postings? My concern is that it is the former.
In other forms of media, while there is some respect for past reputation, generally the latest and greatest tends to rule the day. What if blogging and other link based social media takes this phenomena and turns it on its head? Google itself tends to weight its algorithms thusly. Which means the race isn’t to the swift, it is to whomever started first.
Again, some great thinking here.
PMB
robojiannis responded on 17 Jan 2008 at 10:42 am #
@PMB
You’re right. in blogging seniority tends to rule the day. But I also think (according to the studies of Albert-L. Barabasi), that a blog with good content has a faster development growth, than a senior blog with mediocre posts. Eventually, its popularity will increase.
But achieving such a turn is not that easy.
Google was not the first search engine. I remember, on my first online steps, using lycos.com and altavista.com. But then Google came into the game, with this algorithm, which takes the clicks of the crowd into consideration, and became more popular than the senior engines.
In other news: it’s been a while since your last post…busy?
Micha responded on 17 Jan 2008 at 1:30 pm #
@robojiannis: perhaps I should delete Lawrence Lessigs Wiki on his new book instead?
I guess he would not expect that…
http://codebook.jot.com/WikiHome
And his book The Future of Ideas is now free to download as PDF…
http://lessig.org/blog/2008/01/the_future_of_ideas_is_now_fre_1.html
coincidence or role-model?
@sofiasot: che cazzo dici?!
robojiannis responded on 17 Jan 2008 at 1:36 pm #
@Micha
you got me there dude. no coincidence. Both books have been an inspiration.
SofiaTranslated: ooh…congratulations dear, you’re almost a master…!
sofiasot responded on 17 Jan 2008 at 3:28 pm #
so, i read your thesis mainly focusing on intro and conclusions and browsing through the mass media/small media/participation parts. Am I missing something or the results of your own blog-experiment missing? At the end of the day I m dying to know how much attention did you get and by what means (links, strong connections, weak connections?)…..
robojiannis responded on 17 Jan 2008 at 3:41 pm #
@sofiasot
yes, they are missing. It’s too early to draw in conclusions. While blogging, I’ve learned lots of stuff - which my theoretical approach couldn’t provide.
Mainly, I learned how to stop worrying and love the blog
I’ll get on also to these conclusions, but I think with a blog post.
Glad to see someone reads the thing.
Paul M. Banas responded on 18 Jan 2008 at 4:01 am #
I need to come back to your point “Eventually, its popularity will increase”. That implies seniority drives authority. Google’s algorithm is based upon authority sites (been around forever, have links to spare) blessing other sites with links. The key point is that quality is truly not directly measured.
What if PageRank worked at its introduction in the late 90’s simply because there wasn’t any significant web history prior to its development. An accumulation of links at that time really meant authority from a more limited web audience.
But with web penetration growing significantly, would it be like saying a Jurassic fossil is an authority on life, simply because it is very, very old?
I guess I’m wondering if there isn’t a better way to identify quality, that’s all.
PMB
P.S. I have Barbasi coming to me through inter-library loan. Thanks for the suggestion.
robojiannis responded on 18 Jan 2008 at 10:46 am #
@PMB
You are right, I can’t seem to imagine a better way to identify quality. But imagine this scenario. A new site has a very high degree of fitness (its quality is much better than its competitors). But it doesn’t get any links from the authorities, because they’ve never heard of it. But its connectivity increases steadily and significantly, through word of mouth. More and more users go to this new site, instead of the old.
When its popularity “tip”, meaning its connectivity will reach a form of epidemic (as written by Malcolm Gladwell, in the Tipping Point) the hubs have 2 options:
1. They stay out of the game, they don’t follow the trend and eventually stay behind.
2. They talk about this new site, link to it and see a big new competitor emerging.
This is what happened with twitter (although it didn’t have any competitors in microblogging). What do you think will happen when twine comes out?
A semantic social bookmarking site? If it works good, forget del.icio.us.
You’ve given me many stuff to think about, thanks!