Seminar Hey Tweet, Face the Hyve in the University of Twente

On 26 January the department ISCM organized the seminar Hey Tweet, Face the Hyve
http://www.utwente.nl/mb/actueel/110126_Seminar_ISCM_social_media.doc/
Marc de Vries, the CEO of Hyves was the keynote speaker and about 100 guests followed the event. After the seminar we had a dinner and the UT premiere of the film The Social Network" with the story about the maverick father of the FACEBOOK Mark Zuckerberg. Next to Marc de Vries another interesting presentation was given by Daan Sip of Redchocolate and also a number of colleagues including myself talked about our research in the area of the Social Media in the UT.
For those interested in the seminar there are two links with the video streams:  (My presentation in Part II)
My power point presentation  is available in SlideShare
Part I 
http://videolecture.utwente.nl/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=7f2049f9b9574514847e863685b22ab21d
Part II
http://videolecture.utwente.nl/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=1fd0ae6b2dd3473f831c2242e1d0e6111d

Social Media Seminar in the University of Twente

On the 26th of January the Center of Telematics and Information Technology (CTIT) and our faculty organize a seminar titled "Hey Tweet, Face the Hyve!". I am one of the contributors and member of the panel. The program includes a dinner and the film  “The social network: A story about the founders of the social network site, Facebook”. Those interested (and speak Dutch) are welcome. Book a seat per email to  E.j.m.vanderveen@utwente.nl.

Cloud Computing explained (and applied)

A sudden spike in the search volume of the term Cloud Computing yesterday after the announcement of the findings of a report of Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) claiming that  Cloud Computing could give EU 763bn-euro boost. I spoke about cloud computing in my Web Prophesies post on July 2008 but for those unfamiliar with the term Cloud Computing is something similar to the electricity grid: instead of having your own power generator you buy power from an utility company. With Cloud Computing you do not need any substantial computer infrastructure since the processing, storage and software are outsourced: With an Internet connection you can "buy" services in the cloud.
If cloud computing will deliver such results by driving down costs and increasing speed and efficiencyis somtheng that remains to be seen.  In any case the University of Twente participates in the Cloud Computing Knowledge center Centre4Cloud here in Enschede. This is an initiative of the UT and the Kennispark Twente with partners like Google, IBM and KPN. I will keep to up to date on any interesting news here.

Social Media Research Center: First studies completed

Last year my colleague Sjoerd de Vries from the faculty of Behavioural Sciences of our University invited me to participate as member of the scientific committee in a new research initiative, the Social Media Research Center (SOMERE)*. SOMERE is a junior research center designed in order to serve the interests of researchers and businesses interested in Social Media: about 20 MSc students from my faculty and the faculty of Behavioural Sciences work on research assignments offered by businesses and staff exploring the effects and importance of Social Media in the areas of marketing, education, healthcare, governance and entertainment.
One of the first assignments that was completed was the study by the MSc student Eze Ezekiel Onyebuchi called "MAKING SENSE OF WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGY: DO EUROPEAN STUDENTS USE THE SOCIAL MEDIA APPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATIONAL GOALS?" Ezekiel made a comparison between Dutch and UK students in the way they use the SM for education and networking purposes. There are several similarities and some interesting differences here;
For example the most popular SM applications of UK students for educational purposes are Webcasts (99%), Social Networking (52%), Instant Messaging (42%) and YouTube(41%). Dutch students prefer to contribute and read Wikis (38%),  YouTube(35%), Instant Messaging (25%) and Social Networking (24%).

Regarding the use of social networking sites students in both countries use them mainly in order to stay in touch with friends (UK 70,8% and NL 79,4%). In both countries students are also using these sites for finding out information about people (in both countries around 44% of the students). An interesting difference in the number of students using them in order to make new friends (UK 42,5%, Nl 15,4%) and for finding a date (UK 38,9%, NL 5,1%). These last findings are interesting indeed, it looks that in the UK the social networking websites are used much more than in Holland for making personal contacts or relationships.
The study is available in the SOMERE web site under DOCUMENTATIE; it is also available at request to me.  More interesting results will follow in the future about our research activities in SOMERE (* the site is only in Dutch at the moment).