At the 2010 International Sunbelt Social Networks Conference, to take place at Riva del Garda, Trento, Italy, from June 29 to July 4, 2010, we intend to organize a session on Twitter networks. We are looking for papers with empirical evidence using the social networking and micro-blogging service Twitter.com. Twitter has become one of the most prominent publishing channels of short messages during the last year and caught our attention as network researchers. We would like to initiate a session on how network researchers use the public conversations observed on Twitter and how they capture, analyze and interpret Twitter networks.

Potential contributors should also note that at the Sunbelt conferences series, final (written) papers are not requested to be submitted: just abstracts suffice. However, all submitted abstracts of the proposed papers will be reviewed by the INSNA organizers (and not by the session organizers), who may also decide on the format of the paper presentation (as lectures of 20 minutes or posters of 60 minutes). In any case, since we would like to coordinate the Twitter networks session, potential contributors in this session are free to contact us before the end of November 2009, as the deadline for submission of abstracts of contributed papers is December 1, 2009 now January 15, 2010. Nonetheless, the abstract submission should be done by the contributors themselves who should complete the Submission Form here. Since the name of the session “Twitter networks” is not listed in the Session field of this Form, applicants should insert it in the “New Session” field.

Session initiators:
Ines Mergel, Maxwell School at Syracuse University, NY
Moses Boudourides, Department of Mathematics, University of Patras, Greece
Lothar Krempel, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Germany
Marc Smith, Connected Action Consulting, Belmont, CA

Peace Facebook: Friendships on Facebook

Originally uploaded by Ines Mergel.

I came across the “Peace Facebook” page and was surprised to see how many friendships across unlike boundaries are being created on a daily basis:

Former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, has returned to Twitter with a new Twitter handle (@SarahPalinUSA) after abandoning her official Twitter handle (and with that a lot of followers):

The “Facebook and Government” group on Facebook has started to post screenshots of government agencies who have embedded Facebook into their design:

A while ago, Google has launched a page that solely focuses on the public sector. In their own words:

Most people reach government and other public sector websites by using Google and other search engines. This site is a guide to the tools and best practices that can help you reach, communicate and engage with your community. Most of these tools are free, so they can also help you do more with less.

Google Public Sector

Was Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst “You Lie” last week during the presidential address to the joint session of Congress harmful or helpful to him? This is the question I asked in a not representative poll in my MPA class this Monday. 70% of my students said that it must have been harmful to him. And then we looked at the numbers.

In an unprecedented move, Wilson’s hired a new media strategist who went to work in the same night as his client had breached the protocol. The result: 50 new Twitter messages and a record increase in Twitter followers. Overnight, Mr. Wilson’s followers increased by 500% (from ~ 2,300 followers up to over 10,000 followers over night: see TwitterCounter).

Non of these developments comes as a surprise – although – a conservative Member of Congress is using these channels – which he hadn’t frequented as much and with a very different netiquette and traditional forms of messages: “Have a great Labor Day” – was his last message before the joint session of Congress.

Without a true apology to the American people or his fellow Members of Congress, Senator Wilson managed to create friends – or in the Web 2.0 lingo – picked up people where they are: on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. He mimicked the Campaign 2.0 success of his biggest foe, President Obama, and increased his fans on his congressional Facebook fanpage to over 11,000 fans.

In an interesting move, he is also equipped his Facebook campaign page – a standard profile page that you and I can create – to a donation channel using Google Checkout, without any substantial information about the issues. The main explanation on this page is: “Washington Democrats and their liberal allies want to divert attention away from the concerns about the massive government takeover of health care. In fact, they have made me their Number One target — already raising millions of dollars for my opponent. But I will not give up and I will not back down from our fight. We will not be muzzled. Will you please make a donation to help me fight back against these unwavering attacks? Thank you for standing with me in this fight.”

The result: More than $1.5 million dollars in donations following the weekend of his outburst. Granted – we do not know where these donations are coming from and we are not able to track them back to his Facebook campaign page or even back to his district for that matter. And – his opponent Sen. Rob Miller has made a few bucks himself during the same time frame. Both might be picking up supporters beyond their own playground.

What is interesting and a novelty in the arena of spinning the message is that new media experts are hired – who specifically focuses on targeting new media channels. The messages he is shooting out to the world are no longer about damage control – but about turning a wrong into a right: “I apologized to the President – I believe that is sufficient.”

In other contexts, misbehavior, breaching the protocol, or out-bursting inappropriately creates foes. Kanye West was shunned by his celebrity colleagues for jumping on stage at the VMA awards during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for her best video award – proclaiming that his friend Beyonce should have won the award. Serena Williams received a high fine of $10,500 dollars for insulting a line judge during the US Open finals on the same weekend. Both found themselves in the dog house — and as expected and traditionally the norm – both apologized profoundly, not only directly to the person they harmed, but also to the public.

While Wilson’ congressional website was overloaded with site hits and temporarily went down, it was reported that it was also target of a Denial of Service (DDOS) attack and a slim version without graphics is now back up.

In response to the Congress’ resolution on Tuesday, Congressman Wilson tweets: “Despite Congress’ actions today, I will not back down from speaking the truth. Please stand with me http://bit.ly/duWXu”.

Overall, what we can observe is an immense upheaval of social media tools, a medium that has become the message and a money-for-issue exchange. Social media tools are providing a payoff to catering to the fringe and are facilitating extreme polarization in Congress – and thereby giving a voice to those who were already loud – but not necessarily right. An addition to viral messages of the birthers, death panelists, and now “You lie” shouters.

GSA has launched the government’s own application store:

Here is the related NYT coverage.

I just came across a new Apps for America application that is based on data provided on data.gov mashed with Google Maps and Twitter messages from the region. Here is the information directly from their website:

DisastersMap is a website based on data sourced from data.gov.
The tool is meant to better inform Americans of weather disasters (earthquakes, storms), localizing on the map each of these disasters as well as showing comments on the subject made on Twitter.
DisasterMap illustrates as well the interest of the American Congress in weather disasters, offering data localized on the map thanks to Capitol Words. The map enables you to tweet in real time a disaster with your Twitter account. All data on earthquakes is sourced from the USGS (United States Geographical Survey) and the NWS (National Weather Service).

Disaster Map

I found this fascinating quote today:

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request in April by the Electronic Information Privacy Center (EPIC), the GSA has released the “Web 2.0 agreements” that were generated by the agency on behalf of the federal government with many social media providers in March of 2009.  The release includes contracts with Blip.tv, Blist, YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace and the amendments to the Facebook, Slideshare, Vimeo, and AddThis Terms of Service.  It seems that while these agreements may resolve legal concerns associated with many standard terms and conditions that pose problems for agencies, such as liability limits, endorsements and freedom of information, the contracts with the GSA consistently omit statements concerning Web 2.0 service providers’ obligations to protect privacy.socialfeds.com, Federal Agreements with Social Media Providers Released » Socialfeds, Aug 2009

A list with links to all the federal agreements with different social media providers is included in the original article