An investigation on the strategic use of online social networks to enhance nonprofits’ value chain thriving for a better world

The aim of this investigation on the strategic use of online social networks to enhance nonprofits’ value chain thriving for a better world, is to bring together two different fields of study, the third sector and online social networks. In order to perform this analysis the methodology starts by understanding the relevant topics, online social networks and the value chain. This understanding provides the background for answering the research question, which nonprofits’ value chain activities can be positively affected by online social network’s use? The model is built evaluating the third sector in Portugal followed by a comparison between the nonprofit and for profit sectors. As a result of this analysis a value chain for the nonprofit sector is built. Based on research and six interviews with nonprofits it is created a model of how online social networks impact each nonprofit’s value chain activity. From this impact analysis nine hypotheses are drawn and tested through a survey made to 42 nonprofits and further evaluated by another survey made to 206 online social network users. From the survey analysis it is concluded that online social networks have a positive impact on every value chain primary activity. From the users’ perspective, the publication of information about assistance programs and social awareness and engagement campaigns are the activities most benefiting from the use of online social networks. As final conclusions from the opinions shown during the interviews it is concluded that gathering management information, recruiting volunteers and staff and creating partnerships are online social network functionalities that nonprofits should explore. Nevertheless, from the survey analysis these same functionalities appear as not used by the majority of nonprofits

From Tweet to Graph: Social Network Analysis for Semantic Information Extraction

International audienceThis paper represents a study along the cutting edge of the current analysis of online social network in relation with the contents communicated among users. Twitter data is carefully selected around a fixed hash-tag in order to study the specified content in relation with other contents that users bring to connection. A separate network of hash-tags related (in tweets) is constructed for different days; the networks are analyzed within advanced Gephi package, providing several measures -degree, betweenness centrality, communities, as well as the longest path, by which the evolution of communication around specified concepts is quantified. Our study is absolutely in the current trend of analysis of online social networks that, going beyond mere topology, reveals relevant linguistic and social categories and their dynamics

Prediction, evolution and privacy in social and affiliation networks

In the last few years, there has been a growing interest in studying online social and affiliation networks, leading to a new category of inference problems that consider the actor characteristics and their social environments. These problems have a variety of applications, from creating more effective marketing campaigns to designing better personalized services. Predictive statistical models allow learning hidden information automatically in these networks but also bring many privacy concerns. Three of the main challenges that I address in my thesis are understanding 1) how the complex observed and unobserved relationships among actors can help in building better behavior models, and in designing more accurate predictive algorithms, 2) what are the processes that drive the network growth and link formation, and 3) what are the implications of predictive algorithms to the privacy of users who share content online. The majority of previous work in prediction, evolution and privacy in online social networks has concentrated on the single-mode networks which form around user-user links, such as friendship and email communication. However, single-mode networks often co-exist with two-mode affiliation networks in which users are linked to other entities, such as social groups, online content and events. We study the interplay between these two types of networks and show that analyzing these higher-order interactions can reveal dependencies that are difficult to extract from the pair-wise interactions alone. In particular, we present our contributions to the challenging problems of collective classification, link prediction, network evolution, anonymization and preserving privacy in social and affiliation networks. We evaluate our models on real-world data sets from well-known online social networks, such as Flickr, Facebook, Dogster and LiveJournal

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES FOR ORGANIZATIONS USING INFLUENCERS’ POWER

Social media is a big part of our life nowadays and organizations’ managers should use this fact in order to bring their products and services closer to potential customers via online social networks. Social media represents an almost free tool to simulate the word of mouth discussion on a brand, in this way the information getting to customers that would be hard to get to in other ways. The objective of this paper is to analyze the influence certain people can have in social networks and how these social network influence ranks are calculated. Social media is more than just counting likes and shares; it is about taking into consideration all components that might increase the conversion rate. In this paper, there are presented some techniques that might be used to increase the awareness for the brand, creating a powerful community around the brand’s page, raise the interest of potential customers so that in the end, the sales will grow as well. Another important aspect of the influence in social networks, which is analyzed in this paper, refers to the trust that some influencers might use to promote certain brands. This trust was built usually in several years and the influencer has a considerable number of fans on the personal page, so using social media, this large amount of potential customers might be informed about some products or services, considering that with the trust the fans have in the influencer, the conversion rate will be high. The results and conclusions presented in the paper show why managers should take into consideration persons with high social networks influence ranks when planning a marketing campaign for their brands and how online influence might transform into positive business outcome

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES FOR ORGANIZATIONS USING INFLUENCERS’ POWER

Social media is a big part of our life nowadays and organizations’ managers should use this fact in order to bring their products and services closer to potential customers via online social networks. Social media represents an almost free tool to simulate the word of mouth discussion on a brand, in this way the information getting to customers that would be hard to get to in other ways. The objective of this paper is to analyze the influence certain people can have in social networks and how these social network influence ranks are calculated. Social media is more than just counting likes and shares; it is about taking into consideration all components that might increase the conversion rate. In this paper, there are presented some techniques that might be used to increase the awareness for the brand, creating a powerful community around the brand’s page, raise the interest of potential customers so that in the end, the sales will grow as well. Another important aspect of the influence in social networks, which is analyzed in this paper, refers to the trust that some influencers might use to promote certain brands. This trust was built usually in several years and the influencer has a considerable number of fans on the personal page, so using social media, this large amount of potential customers might be informed about some products or services, considering that with the trust the fans have in the influencer, the conversion rate will be high. The results and conclusions presented in the paper show why managers should take into consideration persons with high social networks influence ranks when planning a marketing campaign for their brands and how online influence might transform into positive business outcome

A Biologically Inspired Model of Distributed Online Communication Supporting Efficient Search and Diffusion of Innovation

We inhabit a world that is not only “small” but supports efficient decentralized search – an individual using local information can establish a line of communication with another completely unknown individual. Here we augment a hierarchical social network model with communication between and within communities. We argue that organization into communities would decrease overall decentralized search times. We take inspiration from the biological immune system which organizes search for pathogens in a hybrid modular strategy. Our strategy has relevance in search for rare amounts of information in online social networks and could have implications for massively distributed search challenges. Our work also has implications for design of efficient online networks that could have an impact on networks of human collaboration, scientific collaboration and networks used in targeted manhunts. Real world systems, like online social networks, have high associated delays for long-distance links, since they are built on top of physical networks. Such systems have been shown to densify i.e. the average number of neighbours that an individual has increases with time. Hence such networks will have a communication cost due to space and the requirement of building and maintaining and increasing number of connections. We have incorporated such a non-spatial cost to communication in order to introduce the realism of individuals communicating within communities, which we call participation cost. We introduce the notion of a community size that increases with the size of the system, which is shown to reduce the time to search for information in networks. Our final strategy balances search times and participation costs and is shown to decrease time to find information in decentralized search in online social networks. Our strategy also balances strong-ties (within communities) and weak-ties over long distances (between communities that bring in diverse ideas) and may ultimately lead to more productive and innovative networks of human communication and enterprise. We hope that this work will lay the foundation for strategies aimed at producing global scale human interaction networks that are sustainable and lead to a more networked, diverse and prosperous society

Redefining community in the digital age : an examination of the physical and Facebook communities of Generation X

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on June 7, 2012).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Thesis advisor: Lynda KraxbergerIncludes bibliographical references.M.A. University of Missouri--Columbia 2011."December 2011"As technology evolves, it is reshaping the way that people communicate and define community. Online social networks, such as Facebook, bring people together in a digital environment. However, it is not clear whether participants reap some of the same benefits as they do with offline relationships and communities. This qualitative study will utilize one-on-one interviews to examine the generation that has bridged the technological divide, Generation X, in order to gauge whether physical communities and Facebook seem to provide similar benefits

Review of Learning in ICT-enabled Networks and Communities

This report is part of a project launched by IPTS with DG Education and Culture to study the innovations for learning, which are emerging in the new collaborative and informal settings enabled by ICT. The report gathers and analyses evidence from learning opportunities that are emerging in ICT-enabled networks and communities. In these new virtual spaces, participation is motivated by an interest to a topic, by creative production and by search for social connection. Online networks and communities emerge both within and across organisations as well as in a completely open and bottom-up manner. Accessing, following, and contributing to the communities can lead to a range of learning outcomes. New technologies afford tools and means for people to participate in communities in a personally meaningful way. However, not all individuals are necessarily equipped with skills or knowledge to benefit from these opportunities for their lifelong learning. Major challenges relate both to the initial barriers for accessing online communities with confident and critical digital competence and skills for self-regulated learning. Finding ways to identify, assess and certify relevant learning and new skills that can be obtained and practiced in these environments is a major task. The report argues that educational institutions should find ways to connect with and learn from these new learning approaches and settings in order to bring about their own transformation for the 21st century, and to support competence building for new jobs and personal development with a learner-centred and lifelong perspective.JRC.J.4-Information Societ

Rethinking the Instruction Session Handout

Handouts can be more than just copies of PowerPoint slides printed in handout mode. Handouts can include descriptions of resources, search strategies, and activities created for a specific library instruction session. Creating paper handouts may appear low tech compared to creating online content and reaching out to students via social networks and course management systems. However, handouts can appeal to visual and kinesthetic learners. During the summer and fall of 2010, instruction librarians at the University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL) experimented with ways to better utilize instruction session handouts to include critical information while incorporating active learning exercises, database comparison charts, and promotion of online resources. With the advent of online instruction resources, like LibGuides and videos, are paper handouts still relevant? Should handouts be given out during sessions? Do handouts need to be critically examined in order to remain useful for students? Join the discussion about the usefulness of paper handouts, and bring your ideas to rethink instruction session handouts. In this interactive session, participants will see and discuss handout examples from UHCL librarians and library literature. After a discussion about the potential usefulness of handouts, participants will break into small groups, and each will be given an instruction scenario. In the small groups participants will discuss the most important information for students to take away from the session and brainstorm various ways to present this information using a handout

How Do Online Social Networks Drive Internal Communication and Improve Employee Engagement?

The definition of a social network is taking traditional or in person networking activities online. It focuses on facilitating the building of social networks or social relations among people who, for example, share interests, activities, backgrounds, or real-life connections. Given the popularity of social network sites, it is obvious that more and more companies are interested in using them to enhance company’s strategy. Many large organizations had been looking for ways to extract business values from social technologies, and some of them had already run their own social network site on their own servers, what we will refer to as an internal social network. Our research, focusing on looking at the practices of real companies’ internal social network, may reveal some insights or give some inspirations