What can data of social network tell us?

   In the last several lectures, several new definitions in a social network have been introduced which include centrality and prestige. Each social network has it unique centrality and prestige, and both of these two can be defined in two types:actor and group. Centrality can be sorted in three types again: degree, closeness, and betweenness.
   Those are all about measuring data about a social network. Each index has it own mathematical algorithm to calculate, and some algorithms are similar to each other.Here, I am not going to talk about how the data can be calculated, instead I am going to provide some perspectives from myself about the use of these data.
 
   How can these data serve us?

   Firstly, I want to use an example of Weibo to explain my thoughts. In Weibo or many other social networks, people speak out their special thoughts and others can make comments beneath their articals or blogs, and some thoughts may attract a lot of attention and some may not. Weibo has done some assortment according to several measuring index mentioned in the first section.
   Yao Cheng,a famous star in China is well known as queen of Weibo for that she has the most fans in this social network.

   Have you ever thought that your own idea can be shared by 26603377 other persons? I have never imagine this circumstance until social network appeared. What is more, the quantity of people who can share blogs of this star can be further bigger due to the function of "share this blog to other" function. So, what I want to say is, in this case, Yao Chen may have the highest actor prestige, degree centrality and some other indexes.

    For Yao Cheng, those data can help her become more famous and then attract more advertisements. For advertisers, through those data, they can analyze which group of people who like to read Yao Cheng's blogs and decide whether their advertisements can get enough profits in her blogs, which in return can benefit Yao Cheng. For common users like me, I can get the main trend of the society culture or civilization from observing different comments beneath the hot blogs from Yao. Maybe that is why some media critics named Weibo the mirror of the whole society, and why Weibo has been aimed to by dealers in quantity.  

     This picture shows the comments beneath one of the hottest micro-blog, and we can see two advertisement here which can prove the high density of advertisements in Weibo.

    Next, I also want to talk about the social network graph of facebook. If we settle two groups of people who played facebook. One group consists of 50 users who have low log in frequency and barely gave comments, while the other group consists of 50 famous users in facebook. I think the centrality and prestige of second group will be higher than data of group one.

    

    

Read alone or read together?

  In the last class, we have played tow activities. We are called to read a paper and answer two questions followed it. This is the first activity.

The second activity asks us to read the paper again in a group, and answer same questions together.

  Answer in activity one:

    1. A Social Cloud is a resource and service sharing framework utilizing relationships established between members of a social network.
       2. A Social Computation Cloud,A Social Storage Cloud,A Social Collaborative Cloud,A Social Cloud for Public Science,An Enterprise Social Cloud
  An
   Answer in activity two:

  only cut out the parts different with my individual answer to show above.

  

   At first, I feel bored about these activities, because the questions about the paper are quite easy to find the answers just in the paper. And it seems that answers of different students turned to be quite similar.I thought this result definitely can be prospected. How would you expect people to answer the question: who gives birth to you? Of course, mom.In the same way, to the two questions followed the paper, of course, similar answers.

  There are 4 types of knowledge involved in academic learning:factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge and metacognitive knowledge. In my opinion, answering the questions in activity one only involves the factual knowledge and conceptual knowledge. And this may be the reason why we  have similar answers that innovative and self- thinking do not permeate much in applying these two types of knowledge. In other words, we are told to do the right thing under the same condition, so our answers will be alike because we all think that is the right answer,just like we all love our mom and dad; you can say: my brain or god told me to choose like this.

   In activity two, answers in a group have interact. According to communication, how do other members in group find the answer and why they think like this is clear to know.

1.what was the epistemic aims in these activities? Is there any change in them? If so, why did you change your aims?

  The epistemic aim in activity one is to find things out, to acquire true. However the aim in activity two is to adopt minimally justified belief and understanding.Aim changes due to that the method of how we establish our knowledge has changed. Philosophers discusses 4 main types of process of knowledge formation: cognitive processes, processes of formal inquiry, interpersonal processes, community and institutional processes. When we discuss the questions in group, knowledge has been built together in a social environment which pushed the step of individual acquire knowledge to step of understand others' theory, refresh individual one and rebuild theory.

   

2.Is there any differences in terms of individual and group epistemic cognition, how?

  Individual and group epistemic cognition are different. Let me make an inappropriate example, last day I had an exam, and during the review before the exam, I found that efficiency of my review is much higher when reviewing in a group than it when reviewing alone, for I can get more information from the others, and change angles of thinking. What I want to say is group epistemic cognition is more effective and comprehensive than individual epistemic cognition.

3.How did you approach to the problem individually and in group,respectively? Is there any differences in the processes involved?

     When approaching the problem individually, I cares much about correctness of my answer; however when approaching the problem in group, in addition to correctness, more specific understanding of the theory and correctness of the theory call most of my attention.

This blog is finished in a rush. I am so sorry that I failed to make a good balance allocating time among homeworks and exam.

Can the Facebook or Renren you represent the real yourself?

   It is not rare to see the fashion girls in Facebook or Renren social networking website publishing their newest luxury bags or shoes on internet. And what would you like to comment below their pictures?

   According to Social Psychology, social comparison in nature is not what we can prevent or suppress.It is a basic social ability which can keep us a seat in the society,although some upward comparison may hurt our self-esteem. For instance, I like to complain about the ranking statistics published by affair offices of the school after getting a terrible scores in an exam.In fact,I know I have screwed up this test, and I have right not to check the ranking. However, why do I still hang onto the ranking result? Frankly,I complained about the ranking system not due to the ranking system itself but to that it may hurt my self-esteem for losing to lots of people in comparison. And you may say, you are so competitive which makes you so tired.To be frank, you have never cared about any ranking? You have never compared yourself with someone behind their backs? Let's confess the comparison in nature.However,comparison is not a negative word for it can always remind you of improving.

   Then get back to the question: what would you like to comment on the beauties' beautiful picture? Let me give you some advises:

           A: no comments

           B: eulogize 

           C: tell her that you do not like their pictures.
 
   I guess,after comparing to this lucky and happy beauty's life, some girls who are in a dilemma may want to choose C because of jealousy.However,I believe most of you will not choose answer C.Because you know C is not the expectant comments, and you prefer to maintain your kind and humane public impression.

   How do you know C is not the expectant answer?

   We live in the historical society,and we have interactions with others everyday. We are directly or indirectly interfered by the whole environment. We need to constrain ourselves follow the rules of the environment for survive.These rules and principles is built in our mind by ourselves based on Social Cognitive Theory.People can learn not only by first handed trial and error but instead by observing the behaviors of others,as well as by observing the outcomgs of those behaviors.

   In the above, I mentioned that we have little ability stop comparing in mind, however,according to Social Cognitive Theory,people can have considerable control over their actions and environment.This well explains why most people choose the answer AB and How do people know C is not the expectant answer of the "show off" girl.Processing of prohibiting choosing answer C is called Self-Regulation in a Social Network. 

   In some sense, the Facebook or Renren you can not exactly represent who you really are,especially under real-name registration.

   I feel it sounds ironic.One of your friends on the Renren website published a statement which irritated you, and you could not against her or him only due to the impression of you for others? To me, it sounds unsound at all. I want to express the against feelings and at the same time I need to hear something different. I mentioned the brainstorm in my last blog. How can sparks come out without conflicts?
   Therefore a new function of reply comes to my mind.The website should allow us to reply to our friends anonymously even if we are real-name registered. 

    A button of "reply anonymously" could be add there in the picture above.It strikes me that this change can make our minds and feeling expressed and received roundly,and protected simultaneously.However,there are several problems in this kind of changed process.

    (1)It may not beneficial for social relationship maintaining.

      e.g. some paranoid people may suspect any person around him.

    (2)It provides tempestuous people with platform to abuse and bully.

   And there must be many other hidden disadvantages in this process. The question that adding an anonymous button or not needs much more research statistics covering social psychology,research and develop cost and so on to decide.

Little thoughts after Social Networking class from a rookie

HI,you! My name is Zou Bingqing.
I am happy you can click my blog while my writing may be really young-age,and opinions and comments may be evidently single-faceted:)
Also, I appreciate all the support or attack comments from you, you and you.

First of all ,I want to say that I am really lucky to have this class,social networking,which is totally different with the classes provided by EE department.To me, the teach mode is fresh and challenging considering my English skill,however,challenges make the faster improvement.Fighting!

In the following, I would like to share my brain breeze with you all.
In the class on 18th night, we have discussed about social tasks,social media and social media&marketing.Those are all brand-new to me, and prediction markets of idea generation in Social Tasks area impressed me the most,because I think it has great economical value.

Hollywood Stock Exchange is an example the teacher presented."It is a web-based, multiplayer game in which players use simulated money to buy and sell "share" of actors, directors, upcoming films,and film related options. Because trading directly affects the prices of the securities- purchasing enough shares of a stock causes its price to rise, and selling causes its price to fall- and because the ultimate value of a movie stock is based on the film's box office, stock prices act as box office prediction.---Wikipedia. I think this predict statistic means a lot. It not only refers to the facial use of ranking the movies,but also can help the investor detect the updated market preferences and set the most applicable price of a movie according to the market need maximizing the profits.

I would like to share another example of prediction Markets can maximizing the profits. This example came through my mind when we were having the class, however I did not know whether it is decent to make this example. Guess it is OK to discuss about it here:)

Several months ago, I read a news on Weibo about a survey on average breast cup size in the world.(website:http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=5285) This survey statistic is from the TARGETMAP. At that time, I see this micro-blog just feeling that it is fun without noticing the economic and predicted value.

However,businessmen always get sharp sense of smell.Not long after the TARGETMAP survey,Taobao,which is the biggest online market，do a research on average breast cup in mainland.Results in below(image source: Taobao data):

I think it is not just for entertainment or eye-catching that the Taobao shopping mall made this simple survey. In my opinion, those statistics may help the businessmen decide how many brassieres of different sizes to stock,and help the manufacturers determine whether or not to build a factory in X city producing X size bra.
In a word, prediction market totally can help businessmen reduce waste and maximize the profit.I will definitely do a comprehensive research before doing business, just as an old saying that grinding a chopper will not hold up the work of cutting firewood.

--------------------I am cut-off line,tired of reading?come on!------------------

I remember in our last class, our teacher spent much time explaining the differences between item-based filtering and user-based filtering in collaborative of Derived Social Recommendation.And here, I want to make an example for each of those two filtering.

User-based filtering: You may like it because your friends liked it.

This picture screenshotted from Sina Weibo. Evidently,Weibo recommended those people to me due to the relatively big quantity of same friends.In another word, you may want to add this people because your friends added them.

INTER CUT AN ADVERTISEMENT: my Weibo account:碧爱翠丝.
Welcome to supervise,sir or madam.










Item-based filtering: You tend to like that item because you have liked those items.

This picture screenshotted from Taobao shopping mall.Obviously,Taobao recommended the other dresses to me for that most people who bought the same dresses as I buy these recommended dressed.That is to say,you may want to buy these dresses because you bought those dresses.

The before-mentioned two methods of filtering can be used under different circumstances.I do not know which kind of circumstance is more suitable for any of these two methods.And it needs more comparison and investigation to get an answer.

The above is what I want to say about the last class.
And then, friendly inform you again,my lovely readers,you may meet diverse mistakes in grammar,spelling,and viewpoints in my first English blog.Please,do not let your finger do nothing.Click your keyboard,and criticize me,praise me,or add me in Weibo :)