mansszat

Report of workshop Mobtaagin at Mediamatic, 15&16 february 2006

Lecture by Jyri Engström: “Why some social network services work and others don’tâ€?

After a short introduction about the working of mobtagging Jyri try to define an answer on the question why he was invited: “Why some social network services work and others don’t”.

There’s a pattern in the development of social networks. Social networks as Firefly, Sixdegrees and LinkedIn grow to millions of users. However, after a while they collapse.

By these networks users enter into relations with each other. The system is based on the connections between the users. Because that’s the only surplus value, it becomes a game. Get more connections then your friends. Through is it a game without a winner, so it die down.

A good comparison was given by Jyri with social networks in real-life. On high school you get a lot of friends, but when you leave High school the friendship is over. The reasons is the disappearing of the common interest, such as school, teachers and going out to the same places.

If you want to make a successful social network their has to be a common interest, a shared object. These objects are the knots of the network, not the people.

It has to be clear what the shared object is. By example, if you throw a beachball into a group, everybody knows what to do. If al ball is going in your direction, you slam it to someone else. By pictures on Flickr it the same. If you like to photograph, you upload your pictures to Flickr. You give feedback to others and you except feedback from others. The shared object are the pictures. A tag can be a shared object on his own. By example, the tag css on del.icio.us create a place of common interests. Besides this advantages, the object is always there. So the network is more stable and it can grow over time.

Presentation/demonstration by Andy Smith: “Flock, the Social Browser�
Flock is a social browser, it helps the user to share. He showed us why the Flock browser makes your live easier. The Flock browser is a complete desktop for the internet. It combines all the possibilities for the modern internet user. Tags, maps, feeds, blogs, photo’s and favourites. He used the keywords faster, stronger and more fun to describe the benefits of this browser. It’s easier to tag your content, find your pictures, write a blog, find out where to go and save things. It is stronger because you can search your history, sort your feeds by topic, synchronise your favourites and upload your photos.

Presentation by Willem Velthoven: “Anymeta�
Willem Velthoven is one of the founders of Mediamatic. He presented Mediamatic projects in which tagging and mobtagging play a important roles. All these projects working with anyMeta, a mobtaggingsystem developed by Mediamatic.

Lecture by Duncan Speakman: “Social tagging and RSS as the engines of the videoblogosphere�
Duncan is a video and soundartist and he zooms in on social tagging as the main structuring principle of videoblogs.

In general tags are important for video, because the content of the video is not searchable yet.
A problem with tagging a video is still that you only can tag the whole video. If there’s in one shot a dog, you had to tag the whole movie with dog. So it’s waiting when the technology makes I possible to tags timeframes of video.

When that’s possible tags are more specific. Another big advantage is that you can quote a part of a video on your blog or vlog instead of linking to the whole movie. Also you can generated a new video to merge all movie parts annotated with the same tag. So it is waiting for the technique.

Like blogs you can have for your vlog a RSS-feed as well. Duncan shows us a clever program FireAnt for organise your videoblogs rss-feeds. With FireAnt you create your one channels to watch your favourite webcasts.

It’s not only waiting on the technique. People had to change. They need to leave the paradigm from ‘old’ movies. Open and end credits prevent a nice transition between different videos in a RSS-feed

To store your own videos Duncan shows us two sites. Mefeedia and Youtube are two services that shows the grow of the vlogging scene.

He call attention to delicious, where many videos are bookmarked. If they have the guidencetag ‘watchthis’ you should do that.

Lecture by Ulla-Maaria Mutanen: “Metadata, databases, unique identifiers and ThingLinks�

Markets are increasingly based on recommendations. If people buy online a product, they’re become recommended with relevant products. Mass media advertising make way for individual recommendations. So a company can recommend all the product they have (longtail), instead of advertise with a small group of popular product(bodytail).

The recommendations are made with products with a product code, such as UPC, EPC, SDIN and ISBN. These codes are developed by companies for companies

But there a lot of products without a product code. Products from small companies or craft and art. Ulla-Maaria feels that’s not fair. So she is developing a free product code for the invisible tail, called ThingLink. Free unique identifiers with an open database. On the ThingLink website you can create your own eight-digit code and add it to your products. You can find already products by google and wikiproducts.org, but she’s open for new initiatives.

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