Researching Social Networks in the Business World

CHI2010 Madness Video for our Yammer talk

networkcrowds — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:39:13 +0000

It is a video created for CHI conference. “CHI madness” is a special “introduction” session at CHI before formal presentation. Every author got 25 sec to advertise their presentations before all conference participants at morning. Our talk is at April 12, Monday “Organization & Community” session.

Micro-blogging behind firewalls – our work on Yammer

networkcrowds — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:13:22 +0000

I am still making sense of Twitter and Yammer and have been playing and researching them for more than a year now. Currently I focus on Yammer since not many scholars from the academic world can live and research it like me (vs. everybody can research twitter freely). I feel lucky to live in a traditional corporate world but with many colleagues are working hard to creating a new and better connected culture in the networked age. For instance, the Yammer I studied was created and grown by several core members, who are experienced and enthusiastic practitioners in the business social media world. Seeing how they work, research what they are working on enable me to get some valuable insights about how social media can shape the business world and corporate culture, inside and outside of firewalls. I truly enjoyed my researcher’s view on these practical works. I also hope my research can help them in some way.

I will slowly adding my thoughts of Yammer here. If you are interested, You can read my papers around this topic.

CHI2010 full paper: first paper of the case study, focus on overview and key findings about “following”

This is a case study about the early adoption and use of micro-blogging in a Fortune 500 company. The study used several independent data sources: five months of empirical micro-blogging data, user demographic information from corporate HR records, a web based survey, and targeted interviews. The results revealed that users vary in their posting activities, reading behaviors, and perceived benefits. The analysis also identified barriers to adoption, such as the noise-to-value ratio paradoxes. The findings can help both practitioners and scholars build an initial understanding of how knowledge workers are likely to use micro-blogging in the enterprise.

ICWSM2010 short paper focusing on “user incentives of using Yammer”

In this paper, following the IT acceptance theory framework, we analyze factors that affect users’ acceptance of micro-blogging in a large corporate environment. We categorized users into 4 groups based on their posting and reading behaviors: Actives, Dabblers, Lurkers and Skeptics. Groups show different perceived benefits, cost concerns, and social influence factors. The work can help both practitioners and scholars build an initial understanding of user acceptance of micro-blogging in the Enterprise

chi-microblog-workshop about modeling user acceptance.

In this paper, we proposed a frame work of studying user acceptance of internal microblogging at work by discussing related theories and describing our data collection. We also reported several initial finding highlights.

My work around “social search”

networkcrowds — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:06:18 +0000

My old accounts at SI/UMICH is finally gone. I decide to move here to keep people updated on my research, my work, and my thoughts.

I was focusing on Social Searching (or I called searching for expertise in social networks in my Ph.D thesis) :

Knowledge Sharing and Yahoo Answers: Everyone Knows Something, Adamic, Lada A., Zhang Jun, Bakshy Eytan, and Ackerman Mark S. , WWW’08 Conference, (2008) Abstract
Expertise Networks in Online Communities: Structure and Algorithms, Zhang, Jun, Ackerman Mark S., and Adamic Lada , WWW’07 Conference, p.221-230, (2007) Abstract
QuME: A Mechanism to Support Expertise Finding in Online Help-seeking Communities, Zhang, Jun, Ackerman Mark S., Adamic Lada, and Nam Kevin K. , Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Systems and Technology (UIST’07), p.111-114, (2007) Abstract
CommunityNetSimulator: Using Simulations to Study Online Community Network Formation and Implications, Zhang, Jun, Ackerman Mark S., andAdamic Lada , Proceedings of Communities and Technology 2007, p.28-38, (2007) Abstract
Searching for Expertise in Social Networks: A Simulation of Potential Strategies,Zhang, Jun, and Ackerman Mark S. ,ACM Conference on Group Work (Group’05), p.71-80, (2005) Abstract
SWIM: fostering social network based information search, J Zhang, M Van Alstyne – CHI’04 extended abstracts on Human …, 2004 – portal.acm.org

I need update some of my early work later,

thanks for visiting