2012年10月21日星期日

Groups in Social Networks

What’s group? It is an important concept proposed by Professor Rosanna last class.According to my understanding,it is a circle that is consists of some people who have same interests, same preferences, same topics or same target.But after the class on Tuesday, I have more deep cognition that, psychology group is just any number of people who interact with each other even though they do not share the same ideas. Sometimes the group may last a short period of time and after that the group members become unrelated with each other. That sounds a bit ridiculous.But it is true.
             
                    groups of Facebook

In terms of groups in the Internet, there are many kinds of existing forms. Some are based on the friendship or for the purpose of making friends so the members in these groups might be also good friends in real life. For example, the friend groups in Facebook or Twitter.

Although Facebook has occupied the unshakable position in the field of social network, more and more users started to complain about the information without pertinence. In a social network, you accept the information from all the friends, and at the same time all your friends could also receive the information you distributed. Even though some benefits could be brought from the large amount of information and users, it is restricted to mine and share the deep interests of the users. Meanwhile, some personalized social network which is based on the interest has begun to attract people's attention. For example, the DOUBAN group, it can gather the people who have the same interest to a clique, so called XIAOZHAN. In this relatively private circle, the users could have a in-depth discussion about the subject of interest, and make friends with similar preferences so that they could obtain the new knowledge and obtain the help of experts. These groups may be established for the purpose of sharing the same interest and preferences. Their hobby can involve different field such as music, movie, sport and travel.



Douban xiaozu


The similar representative example might be the social networking websites, named circle launched by Google. The CIRCLE put forward such idea: school, work, friends and family and they are holy and pure in different environment. So we can communicate with different people different things. But Twitter and Facebook has destroyed"context" in social network. This may limit the development of online social networks. The rapid development of Google+ and various new social networks points to a clear direction - more special-interest social networks. Social networks have changed gradually from the mass spread forms to the personalized acquaintance circle mode. When people are tired of the shallow level information exchanging in the popular social networks; when people began to feel frustrated since they could not met friends of the same abilities and interests after a moment, people might give up part of the popular social networks and return to more personalized groups in internet.



Groups of Google+


Recently, the emergence of a new trend in social network services is to search for nearby people - those users may wish to meet people. This kind of discovery mechanism implements the function through some service based on geographical location.For example, the sign-in application of Foursquare, automatically found people nearby with the same interests in Sonar and Momo, and the group chat services in Wechat. Today, the smart phones are bringing about a new network: social found services rather than social network services.



Foursquare

References:
[2]Wikipedia;
[4]Social Network Analysis: A Handbook; John Scott


15 条评论:

  1. The article involves a large amount of examples about groups which are pretty vivid and suitable. At the same time, it proposes a new opinion as well. “Sometimes the group may last a short period of time and after that the group members become unrelated with each other.” I am confirmed that it accords with the life style of modern totally--instant culture.

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    1. Thanks for your careful reading, my friend.And this is an interesting point I have proposed. Maybe it reflect the people's indifference to some extent.At the same time, the group may not narrow the distance between the people, on the contrary,it make the people farther and farther.That's a pity.

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  2. hey!After reading your article, I feel like to be inspired about the concept of "group" in Social Networks. We usually regard the group as the traditional way, that is all the group members have the same interests, same preferences, same topics or same target, just as what you said. But we may really ignore the short-time period group until you propose your idea. Indeed, there exist some groups which have a short period in the social networks, but can we see that the reason of their no longer exist is that the group members have achieved their goal so that the group's life cycle has to come to end?
    In addition, I think that the LBS applications would have a good prospect if they can make users find their "group" more easily.

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    1. Thanks for your reading, oba gangnam style! I can't agree with you any more. The LBS applications would have a good prospect since the widely use of the smart phones make it more and more convenient. As such (LBS) is an information and has a number of uses in Social Networking today as an entertainment service, which is accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and which uses information on the geographical position of the mobile device. This has become more and more important with the expansion of the smartphone and tablet markets as well.

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  3. Social network has given me a new concept of group and groups are more easily formed here. As mentioned in your blog, groups on social network are formed with some kind of ideas, like a common interest or a common place or a common title and so on. Those are the ideas I could think about before reading your blog. And the last part of your blog gives me a new idea about groups on social network. Maybe the trend of "social found services rather than social network services" will become more popular than the traditional way, for groups have more chances to be formed, with fewer targets but more surprises.

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    1. Thanks for your reading. Yes, I also think the location service would become more and more important. Another example is Near LBS (NLBS), in which local-range technologies such as Bluetooth, WLAN, infrared and/or RFID/Near Field Communication technologies are used to match devices to nearby services. This application allows a person to access information based on their surroundings; especially suitable for using inside closed premises, restricted/ regional areas.

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  4. I could not agree more on that"Social networks have changed gradually from the mass spread forms to the personalized acquaintance circle mode." The first wave social networks brought to us is sharing anytime, anywhere with all our friends. But we soon find out large proportion of the information is none of our interest. We don't give it a damn but we cannot block out certain friend because of this. So social groups with people having more in common really cater to our tastes even the groups are not based on relationship in real world or the time of existence is not that long.

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  5. Hey~ I like your examples about online social group. These 'groups' provide us fuctions such as sharing information with friends, expanding circle of communication, keeping pace up the world, ect. however, maybe this fomation also make people own less secret, and the number of cases of someone being 'human fresh searched'is huge. so I belive individual should use those online social groups properly.

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    1. Yes, the convenience of the communication at the social network may cause some security issue. You can read my first blog which introduce some idea about the privacy issues at the social networks. Human flesh search,so call ''ren rou sou suo'' in Chinese(人肉搜索).It is a literal translation from the Chinese, are internet searches by people for people. In online forums or bulletin boards, netizens search for and share information to identify an individual, their whereabouts, personal and contact details.

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  6. Normally,we regard the group as a set of people who have the same interests or aims, and who organize themselves to work or act together,usually lasts for a long time.As shown in your article,a new kind of online group forming appears for those who may wish to meet others by searching for their surrounding people.Based on geographical location,this discovery mechanism implements the service.I totally agree with you on this fresh idea. Maybe the trend of "social found services"becomes more and more popular than our traditional way of group forming.

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  7. 此评论已被作者删除。

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  8. sorry for a mistake in my last blog

    Your blog is very interesting. I haven't logged on my renren and weibo for a long time just because these SNS are full of all kinds of information and I can't find the messages that interest me. I think that more special-interest social networks are very necessary. It can save us from millions of boring information on the Internet. What's more, we can find friends that share the same interest with us more easily.

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  9. interesting :)

    do u take forum as a group?

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  10. The tendency of people to come together and form groups is
    inherent in the structure of society, so as the online social network. the examples given above is quite clear and wonderful to show the interesting aspects of the online group, and take us into a much more deeper thinking. thank you for sharing, i love it...

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  11. Group in Social Networking is one of the components that link up people. But seems like, the friendship/circle of friends still be the primarily linkage for users actively use the Social Networking Services. Do you agree with that?

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