UF Social Media Scholars

"Import posts from your site or blog, or copy/paste from a manuscript. Edit content and drag it into chapters, then congratulations ... you're an eBook author!"

Explores the downfall of Bebo from the primary social network in the UK to the decision to shut down in 2010.

"The editors of Webster's New World Dictionary chose the verb 'overshare' as their word of the year in 2008. Why are we increasingly compelled to share mundane details of our lives online? We talk with Hal Niedzviecki, author of 'The Peep Diaries: How We're Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors.'

"More than four out of every five professors use social media. And more than half of professors use tools like video, blogs, podcasts, and wikis in their classes."

Good slideshare on the future of social networks when applied to social reality. Shows both the benefits and the creepy parts. Is there a line at which society will say, "no more?"

"This paper explores key issues people experience managing personal boundaries within and across social technologies. We look in particular at email and online social networks. We offer a theoretical framework for understanding the errors in assumptions about the singularity of identity that are currently inscribed into the sharing models of social technology systems. Through a questionnaire study we examine how people facet their identities and their lives, and how these facets are expressed through use of technology. We found for more mature users family was an extremely important context for sharing online, and that email was still a preferred form of communication for private sharing across facets of life. Single, working men had the highest level of incompatible facets, and a higher level of facet incompatibility was correlated with increased worry about sharing in the context of social networks."

The South Park guys skewer Facebook culture and pay tribute to the original Tron movie. Aside from being damn funny there's a lot of great discussion points in here.

Infographic with some nice nistory and demographics for social media students.

One of the best arguments I have read against the use of Twitter at conferences.

Roundtable of discussion relating to technologies and social media.

Nothing surprising to me, but these are key discussion points about Facebook.

Great set of interview tips.

2006 profile of Rocketboom. Interesting now as a "what they were thinking" piece.

Nice timeline of history of the Web, 2000-2010. Good mix of items and some include audio links. Used in class.

Essay on peep culture by Hal Niedzviecki, author of Peep Diaries (one of our texts.) Good overview of the themes in the book.

YouTube history, milestones, video statistics, top 10 channels (most subscribed).

"journalistic entities - newspapers, magazines, websites, and, yes, Columbia J-school itself - have to start putting much more emphasis on reading, as opposed to writing."

Good, short history of YouTube from Ars Technica - circa 2010

YouTube help channel  - help videos produced by other YouTube users.

A great case study of why many of those sites that claim to measure your popularity are meaningless.