What happened to my blog?!

After the last blog post I found strange thing happened in my blog. I set the counter to track the number of visitors, which is on the left side of my blog, and I found that after the last blog post, the number of visitors dramatically increased. I also used Google Analytics to see who and how many people visit my blog. So I checked what happened. Below is the information given by Google Analytics.

#--------------------------------------------------------
# Profile Name: vg-ryo.blogspot.com/
# Report Name: Executive Overview
# Date Range: 4/19/2007 - 4/25/2007
#--------------------------------------------------------
#--------------------------------------------------------
# Visits and Pageviews
#--------------------------------------------------------
Date Range	Visits	Pageviews
Thu 4/19	1	3
Fri 4/20	1	1
Sat 4/21	0	0
Sun 4/22	1	1
Mon 4/23	1	1
Tue 4/24	13	15
Wed 4/25	32	36
You can see that the number of visitor suddenly increased 4/25.
#--------------------------------------------------------
# Visits by New and Returning
#--------------------------------------------------------
Visitor Types	Visits
New Visitor	44
Returning Visitor	5
#--------------------------------------------------------
# Geo Map Overlay
#--------------------------------------------------------
Country/Region/City	Visits
Washington|389376|-770928	9
Tokyo|356850|1397514	1
Houston|297755|-954152	1
Bangalore|129832|775833	1
Stanford|374178|-1221720	1
Minneapolis|449823|-933063	1
Georgetown|306728|-976673	1
Moscow|557522|376156	1
London|429833|-812500	1
Fairfax|388357|-773375	1
Cairo|300500|312500	1
Durham|359954|-789019	1
Arlington|388782|-771054	1
La Porte City|423049|-922062	1
Huntsville|347018|-866108	1
London|515000|-1167	1
Bellingham|487413|-1224337	1
Irving|328569|-969629	1
Hubli|153500|751667	1
Lattimer Mines|409943|-759613	1
Hohendodeleben|521000|115000	1
Tallinn|594339|247281	1
Sydney|-338833|1512167	1
Hyderabad|173753|784744	1
Pleasant Grove|404647|-1116332	1
San Jose|373073|-1218569	1
Newbury|514000|-13167	1
Atlanta|338004|-843865	1
Duluth|468144|-921270	1
Williamsport|412845|-769204	1
(not set)|(not set)|(not set)	1
Simpang Empat|49500|1006333	1
Praha|500833|144667	1
Albany|426929|-738380	1
Kirk Ireton|530333|-16000	1
Roslyn Heights|407809|-736415	1
Boscombe|511500|-17167	1
Victoria|484333|-1233500	1
Wow, people all over the world see my blog!
#--------------------------------------------------------
# Visits by Source
#--------------------------------------------------------
Sources	Visits
googleblog.blogspot.com	39
nicole-melander.blogspot.com	5
www2.blogger.com	2
mixi.jp	1
6degreesofgeorge.blogspot.com	1

39 people from Google's blog? Why is that? I made links to the post on 4/17, but did it make any difference? Ya. There is big difference. Since I made link to the Google's blog post, the link to my blog is appeared on the list of "Link to this post". That's why many people came from Google's blog to my blog.

I was little bit surprised because I didn't expect that just making link to Google's blog increased the visitors. Famous page like Google Blog has huge number of visitors, so the connection to such page has huge influence on your blog. If you want to increase the number of visitors, why don't you put the link to some popular pages like Google Blog.


Oh, by the way, Google Analytics is a great tool. You can see the changing number of visitors by line chart, which Web pages they come from, visitors physical location by map, which page contents are clicked, etc. I recommend you to use this tool. Its interesting.


Thank you for reading my blog! I hope you enjoyed reading.

Web 2.0 helps poor students

Since Web 2.0 doesn't have presice defenition, Most trend in Web world is called Web 2.0. , I think one of the great feature among them is that everything happens on "their" server, not on "our" server. For example, if you use Gmail, you don't have to install anything. You just have to create account on Google, type address, and enter. You don't have to care about security and use your memory to store all messages.

This trend helps me a lot. Before I came here I needed to buy my PC, but I didn't have much money, so I had to choose as cheap PC as possible (remember my presentation?). Therefore, my PC doesn't have much functions and software. However, I have almost no problem with my PC (its speed is a big problem, though). Think about what you really need in your PC. You can use Gmail or Yahoo mail for e-mail, and they can store more than GB. You can write paper by Google Docs, and also create spreadsheet. You can make slides for presentation by Web pages such as SlideShare. Also I heard Google Docs will be available for presentation slides from this summer. If you can use the Internet, you can do almost everything. And more importantly, they are all for free. If you have basic functions of PC, you don't need anything to be pre-installed.

Using tools on "their" server has some other advantages. Since you don't use tools on your server, you don't have to install and use your PC's memory. Moreover, you don't have to update those tools. If you used Microsoft Office and they published Microsoft Office 2007, you would have to purchase CD-ROM and update them in your PC. However, you don't have to purchase anything, they will update the system and you can automatically use updated version.


By the way, I found the interview of Tim O'Reilly, who created the word Web 2.0, and he seems to disagree that Web 3.0 is about Semantic Web. You can read it in here

SNS recruitment & traditional recruitment

Today's readings mention that many SNS is started to be used for recruiting. What's good or bad about SNS recruiting? Let me compair the recruiting by SNS and traditional way of recruiting.


SNS

1. Easy to find someone who can fulfill a company's need.

Many users of SNS for recruitment provide detailed information about them. Thanks to the development of search enigine technology, it is very easy to find someone who have necessary ability or experience. You can find good people through traditinal processes (cover letter, resume, interview... is it same in America?), but you need a lot of energy to read all resumes and find proper people. However, if you use SNS, you can find them by just one click.

2. Reliable because of referral.

It is possible that users put wrong information on their profile on SNS or resume. However, if they have the referral by employees in your company, they are more reliable. Referral is important to find good potential employees. SNS is superior in that point. It can reach various people through network. Not only your employees, but also your employees' friends and their friends... can be referred.

3. Not suit when you recruite many people or plan to hire someone and educate him/her through work.

Sometimes company just want labor force and many new workers. In that case, SNS may not be a preferable way because you have to search them and offer them a job individually. Also, when you want to hire someone and educate him/her through work, it is not good way. In that case, you will focus more on their personality than their experience or ability. On SNS, it is difficult to assume users personality. You need to actually see that peroson and talk with him/her.

4. You wil target "passive" candidates.

If you find someone who will fulfill your company's need, it doesn't necessariry mean that they wnat to join your company. You can offer them a job, but they may reject your offer because they may not like your job.

Traditional way

1. Easy to hire many people.

If a company is popular, more people than it needs will apply for that company. Therefore, traditinal way is good way to hire many people because it can gather large number of people.

2. Applicant want that job.

Generally, if you don't like one job, you will not apply for that job. Most applicants want that job, so if you tell them you will hire them, they won't reject your offer, unless they are offered better job by other companies.

3. Difficult to find outapplicant's ability.

Finding out one's ability only by a resume is difficult. You need interview or referral to judge one's ability.


These are what I can come up with now. Both have good point and bad point. I don't think you can rely on one of them. You need to combine or use them separately according to what you want.

SNS recruitment & traditional recruitment

Today's readings mention that many SNS is started to be used for recruiting. What's good or bad about SNS recruiting? Let me compair the recruiting by SNS and traditional way of recruiting.


SNS

1. Easy to find someone who can fulfill a company's need.

Many users of SNS for recruitment provide detailed information about them. Thanks to the development of search enigine technology, it is very easy to find someone who have necessary ability or experience. You can find good people through traditinal processes (cover letter, resume, interview... is it same in America?), but you need a lot of energy to read all resumes and find proper people. However, if you use SNS, you can find them by just one click.

2. Reliable because of referral.

It is possible that users put wrong information on their profile on SNS or resume. However, if they have the referral by employees in your company, they are more reliable. Referral is important to find good potential employees. SNS is superior in that point. It can reach various people through network. Not only your employees, but also your employees' friends and their friends... can be referred.

3. Not suit when you recruite many people or plan to hire someone and educate him/her through work.

Sometimes company just want labor force and many new workers. In that case, SNS may not be a preferable way because you have to search them and offer them a job individually. Also, when you want to hire someone and educate him/her through work, it is not good way. In that case, you will focus more on their personality than their experience or ability. On SNS, it is difficult to assume users personality. You need to actually see that peroson and talk with him/her.

4. You wil target "passive" candidates.

If you find someone who will fulfill your company's need, it doesn't necessariry mean that they wnat to join your company. You can offer them a job, but they may reject your offer because they may not like your job.

Traditional way

1. Easy to hire many people.

If a company is popular, more people than it needs will apply for that company. Therefore, traditinal way is good way to hire many people because it can gather large number of people.

2. Applicant want that job.

Generally, if you don't like one job, you will not apply for that job. Most applicants want that job, so if you tell them you will hire them, they won't reject your offer, unless they are offered better job by other companies.

3. Difficult to find outapplicant's ability.

Finding out one's ability only by a resume is difficult. You need interview or referral to judge one's ability.


These are what I can come up with now. Both have good point and bad point. I don't think you can rely on one of them. You need to combine or use them separately according to what you want.

CRM & Privacy

Two weeks ago, I posted the blog about the relationship between convenience and privacy. I wrote that convenience and privacy are the relationship of inverse proportion. Today's post is also related to it.

Recent marketing trend shifted from mass marketing for gaining new customers to targeted marketing for maintainig existent customers. It was because low economic growth made it difficult to gain new customers. (I heard that according to the research by an automaker, they have to spend $7,000 to gain new customer. If it's true, it's ridiculous.) It is easier for them to maintaining existent customers, so they focused more on maintaining the good relationship with customers. That's why CRM is important today.

To maintain the good relationship with customers, it is important to give personalized service to each customer. They must collect each customer's personal information such as name, age, interest, etc, as much as possible, and analyze it to give them adequate service. Thanks to the development of technology, the management and analysis of customer information became much easier, and also there are many CRM software to help them.

However, as the management of customer information become more important, they have to store more personal information. They will use it for better CRM, so they store it in their server. Of course, I believe they place strict control on such information and anyone can't access it easily. But again, we have to give up privacy for convenience.

Virtual collaboration tools & its ideal vision

Rob Cross argues that physical distance affects the effectiveness of networks. However, the problem of physical distance can be solved by the virtual collaboration tools.

I don't know much about and have much experience of such tools, so I don't know the quality of them. However, if their quality is same level as what we experienced in virtual class, I think they are good enough to use. Even if there is a distance between each attendant of meeting, since they can talk or see each other and share documents online, its almost same as facing each other.

But for effective virtual collaboration, both being able to talk or see each other and to share documents are necessary. I think only document sharing is not enough. Only using Google Docs without any tools to communicate can result in chaos because many users can modify a same part at the same time. They need the tools to communicate and tell something like "Hey, I will modify this part, so wait just a few minutes."

If companies have these tools and they have enough quality, what you need is to fully utilize them. Like Robert D. Hof mentioned, it takes time to get used to these tools. If only those who are familiar with technology can use these tools, virtual collaboration will decrease its value because the diversity of opinion will not exist in such situation. Therefore, they must be simple and easy.

Privacy & Convenience

Privacy and covenience is always the relationship of inverse proportion. To gain more convenience, you have to give up more privacy. For example, social-networking software called Visible Path takes into account the strength of relationships, so it considers the number of e-mails the workers exchanged. It argues that it never check the content of e-mail, but to improve its function, it should consider the content of e-mails. Without caring about the content, it values a very important business e-mail as equally as an e-mail sent by mistake. The content of e-mail is important factors to decide the strength of relationships. Checking the content of e-mails is necessary for the convenience, but it means less privacy.

Another example is Amazon.com's personalization. It gives the recommendation list, and it is based on users' purchase records. It is very useful function, but it means that Amazon.com keeps the record of purchase by every customer who has their accounts. Remaining record of purchase may be uncomfortable for some users. Again, it is the problem of privacy.

There are much more examples, such as Google Earth, Google Desktop Search, etc. They are all convenient, but privacy issue always involves. As Ghahremani mentions, "people have widely different notions of what's invasive". How far users and service providers compromise on privacy is difficult issue.

Experience in ITEC-333

I recommend ITEC-333 class not only because of the class discussion, but also because of hands-on experience. It is very useful to have hands-on experience of many tools especially after I learned how significant influence they have. Creating my own blog and learning its significance at the same time is a good example of it. Other than blog, I experienced many tools such as RSS, network analysis, wiki, social bookmarking,SEO, social news, etc. They are useful and important tools in today's Web world. In addition, most of these tools are for free, so you will get a lot of benefit from learnig these tools.

I won't recommend this class to those who are not interested in social networking and have allergy to computer. It is not very difficult to utilize these tools, but you have to deal with computer anyway. So if you can't endure facing to face with computer screen, you should not take this class. Except such cases, I strongly recommend this class.

Government & IT. Hope or Threat?

Some of the reading for this week mention dual nature of technology. Many people think technology make the world better, but it can be threat. Like McGovern said, "technology is neutral". Since technology has developed rapidly and has huge influence on society, it will be a nightmare if government misuse technology.

It reminds me two stories related to technology and government. The first story is about USA PATRIOT act. It was established after 9/11 and gave the US government the right to access private information. The government can gain the information about what we searched, what we clicked, what we sent by e-mail, etc. Such records remain on Internet service providers or search engines such as Google. It was established to prevent terrorism, but the government can abuse its power, so the privacy issue became a big concern.

The second story is about Google and the Chinese government. Since China is big market and the government demand to eliminate some Web sites, which are adverse to its interest, from the search results, Google accepted the censorship of its search results. Therefore, some Web sites which can be searched by Google in the US cannot be searched by Google in China. The number of Web pages today are enormous and everyone use search engines to find Web pages, so not appearing on search results is almost same as not existing.

If government can control some IT companies, it may be able to control all information. If it abuses its power, it will be horrible.

Online game and its problems

Online game become popular these days. Its connectivity with other players makes it more interesting. However, its connectivity can cause several problems.

First problem is its security. Since it is exposed to outside Web world, it can suffer for computer crimes such as DoS attack. Network problem of Final Fantasy 11 was caused by DDoS attack. Offline games don't have such problems because they work in their individual machines. Like usual Web services, it will be the semi permanent competition between computer criminals and online game companies. Therefore, this problem is hard to solve.

Second problem is Real-Money Trading (RMT). It is the problem that players of online games trade the imaginary currency in games with real money. It is also impossible in offline games because they have no means to interact its data with other software's data. Since online games started to involve real money, RMT can bring more fraud in online games. In addition, other players can be disturbed by those who involve RMT.

Third problem is how to charge the fee. Due to these days price competition, some companies moved from monthly fee system. They started the new system that players will be charged when they purchase in-game currency or some items with free connection. It sounds creative system, but one's wealth can influence how well players can play in this system. It may be inappropriate for original purpose of games.


In addition, although it may be same as offline game, some people are addicted to online games. One guy in Korea died because he keep playing online game for 86 hours in Internet cafe. Similar accident happened in some other countries, so be careful.

Reputation systems and anonymity

Reputation systems help to maintain the order in Web world, and many sites utilize this system such as Amazon and eBay. However, there is still the possibility that someone will cheat in reputation systems. According to Dellarocas, one way to prevent cheating is controlled anonymity which means that the information about the reputation is open, but the information about identity is not open. But I don't think anonymity will prevent such cheating.

I think anonymity and reputation are conflicting concepts. In reputation systems, one is discouraged from cheating or antisocial behavior because such actions will cause bad reputation and that reputation will remain open to everyone. It based on the theory that without such a kind of punishment, people will not take appropriate action. However, that theory should be applied to the people who create reputation, in other words, evaluators. It is not guaranteed that they will equally evaluate. If they can evaluate anonymously, they may evaluate someone unfairly bad or good (maybe because of prisoner's dilemma). I often see that Amazon's some customer reviews are unusually low-rated (ex. I sometimes see "1 of 16 people found the following review helpful" on the reviews which I think pretty good). You need only Amazon's account to evaluate customer's review, and no one can see who evaluated it. Such things happen because of anonymity.

To avoid such situation, evaluators should also be exposed to reputation systems. Everyone should be able to see how they evaluated. Then, there will be the reputation of evaluator, and they will be discouraged from inappropriate evaluation. The reputation of evaluator is impossible with anonymity.

Tag's potential & problem

What I'm gonna write is very complicated and dfficult for me to express in English. If I write something incomprehensible, I apologize it.

Tag will help files to be categorized. This function will help seach engine because the data which has no letter information, such as picture and movie, can't be categorized without tag. In addition, if all Web pages are categorized by tag in advance, it will make search easy for search engine.

Tag has the potential to enable the Semanric Web. In Semantic Web, tag will categorize information by its meaning, and search engines can search infromation based on the purpose or meaning of the query. Oh, I can't describe it well. Just imagine that you put the query like "What is a picture painted by the Impressionists in 19c?". Semantic Web can answer your question. Search engine will find the file which has the tags "19c", "Impressionist", "picture". Usual Web will only match words in query with text, so such search is impossible. This is amazing.

However, using tag has one problem. Tag is not necessarily visible. Some blog shows it, but it is not always appeared. Therefore, if someone put irrelevant tags on his or her Web page, the readers can't find whether its tag is correct. It is possible to put irrelevant tag on the page to make the page searched for every words and ranked higher. That's why Google does not emphasize tag so much. When Google searched the Web pages just by matching query with contents, they had to struggle with those who attempted to be ranked higher by distributing many irrelevant words in their page. They don't want to go back those days. So to utilize tag for search, it is necessary to prepare countermeasure to avoid such mess.

The Advantages of Blog

When a company utilizes a blog for its business, what advantage a blog has? In "Naked Conversation", Scoble mentions that a blog enables two-way communications. Two-way communications are important for business because it is impossible for traditional advertisement to achieve two-way communications. Blog can do both advertisement and two-way communications at the same time. Is there other advantages? Let's think about them.

There are two types of advertisement. One of them is traditional advertisement such as TV commercial and junk-mail. It is "push" style, which means that a company unilaterally pushes its product information to customers. It pushes their advertisement regardless of customer's need. However, such ad started to lose its effect because customers don't want such ad and also technology help them refuses such ad, such as the recorders' commercial skipping function. Therefore, there is increasing need for another type of ads, and it is "pull" style advertisement. Pull style ad supposes that customers voluntarily access ads. Blog is effective as pull style ad because corporate blog will be read only by those who are really interested in that company. It can address to interested customers.

Another awesome thing about blog is good products can be mentioned in customer's blog. It will be a good advertisement because the comment by the users can be more reliable than what a company says. In addition, a blog tends to be read by people who have the similar preferences with the writer. Therefore, it can appeal to new potential customer. A company's good reputation can be spread by word-of-mouth. Moreover, if a blog can get track-back by many blogs, it will be ranked higher in search result.

What motivates people to cooperate

Rheingold mentions the cooperation of the masses for public goods. He refers to the development of Internet which is one of the successes of this cooperation. Today, utilizing this cooperation becomes trend. Open source, You Tube, Wikipedia, and Amazon's customer reviews are good examples. However, the success of these companies brought me a question. What motivates people to cooperate?

In fact, I can't find answer on my own. I can come up with several ideas, such as pursuit of self-benefit, intellectual satisfaction, good reputation and admiration, but none of them can convince me.
In many cases, the cooperation relates to their own benefit. For example, if someone develops a program based on open source, which means the program code opened to everyone for free, it can be for self-interest because that program can bring huge money to him or her.
However, self-interest alone can't explain the case of Wikipedia because posting something on Wiki can't bring any money. In Wiki's case, it may relate to intellectual satisfaction because if one's post is reflected on the pages without causing any argument, it means that many intelligent people accept his or her posting.
In Amazon's case, the desire for good reputation or admiration may be related. Amazon's customer review is also reviewed by users (You always see "X of X people found the following review helpful" in Amazon, right?). In addition, there is a ranking system called "Top Reviewers". These systems will bring reviewers a sense of admiration.

Yes, I could come up with these ideas, but I can't still be comfortable with the conclusion that these factors motivate them to cooperate. I can't understand why the quality of Wiki can be better than Encyclopedia Britannica (and also why many professors don't like student referring to Wiki!). So if you have any idea, please feel free to comment.

The reliability of Six-Degree & the effects of Connection

Kadushin explained about the concept of "Six Degrees of Separation". He argues that "For most purposes, the number of effectively consequential zones is between two and three; that is, whatever is being studied, individuals or organizations, past the third or at most fourth zone objects or nodes have relatively small effects on the focal individual or structure."(p.11) I want to consider the reliability of "Six-Degree" and the question that "Does the connections with the people, past the third or fourth zones, have only small effects?"


According to http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AD%E6%AC%A1%E3%81%AE%E9%9A%94%E3%81%9F%E3%82%8A this Web page (sorry, its Japanese), if six people, who have the connections with 43.15 people, are connected, every people on the earth will be connected because 43.15 to the 6th power (the 6th root of 43.15?) is 6,454,829,873... and the world population in 2005 is 6,453,581,351, which is less than 43.15 to the 6th power. Of course, it does not consider the overlaps, so this number can not be true. Moreover, if there is any person who is not connected with anyone, nobody can reach him or her. Therefore, it is almost impossible to connect all people on the earth through six people. However, if you give up those who are connected with nobody, there is still possibility to connect other people. I don't know what is the enough number of connections to overcome those overlaps, but 43.15 is a quite small number. If connections are not restricted to only strong ones, most people should have more than 43.15 connections. I can't prove this theory to be right, but considering the number 43.15, I think it seems to be probable.


To answer the question that "Does the connections with the people, past the third or fourth zones, have only small effects?" , the strength of connections must be defined. In here, I suppose that being connected means that knowing each other. If so, I don't think the effect of connections will decrease as the number of the zones increases. Each zone should have almost same effects. For example, if you want to ask something people in the sixth zone know, first you will ask someone in the first zone. You and the person in the first zone know each other, so he or she is likely to ask your favor. Next, the person in the first zone will ask the person in the second zone. The probability that the person in the second zone will do his or her favor is same as the case between you and the person in the first zone. It will not change. Therefore, the effects of connections cannot be changed by the number of zones. Of course, the speed to get the information you want will change, but at least, you can get the information you want.


I'm sorry to write redundant blog. Thank you for your patience.



Bibliography

Charles, Kadushin. Introduction to Social Network Theory. Unknown, 2003.

2nd week

Rheingold explained the connection between "the technical properties of computer networks and the communication properties of social networks."(p. 58)
He explained the several laws which can be used to estimate the value of network.
They basically estimate the value by how many ways its nodes are connected.
One thing we have to consider is that these values are just potential.
For example, Metcalfe's law defines the value of network as the square of the number of its nodes because nodes are connected each other.
(http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ny3k-kbys/contents/sneaky_exponential.html
You can find the detailed explanation about each law in English and Japanese in here.)
The connections between each node really exist, but they are not necessarily utilized well.
Imagine the network of telephones.
It is true that they are connected each other, but it is impossible that all of them fully utilize these connections because it means everyone calls every other people who have phone.
Same thing is true for Reed's law.
It may be true that the network's potential value will exponentially increase if its nodes can form groups.
However, creating and maintaining groups and contacting with other groups require some costs.
Therefore, the potential value of network will not necessarily be utilized.
The question is how technology enable us to utilize this huge potential value.


One interesting thing is that these two books have the different views of the value of social networks.
Cross and Parker says that "we are not simply suggesting that more connectivity is always better." (p. 8)
They argue that the balance of connection in network is important.
However, the several laws Reighngold explained in his book estimate the value of network only by the number of connection.
For him, more connectivity is better.
We should consider the question that "Which is better, the number connections or the balance of connections?"



Bibliography

Rheingold, Howard Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA, Basic Books, 2003.

Cross, Robert L. The hidden power of social networks : understanding how work really gets done in organizations. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, 2004.

First post

Hello, my name is Ryo.
I'm from Japan and studying in American University as an exhange student.
This semester, I take ITEC333 Social Networking & Business class.
This blog will be used for that class.
I will write my thought about the assigned reading each week.
I'm not a native English speaker, so I may write something difficult to understand.
So please be patient with my posting.

Thanks


I post this blog on my honor.