Idea 4 – Personality Test: Interest-based test on a social networking website

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Amir AryaArjmand

In this final ideas post, Amir describes an interest-based online test – one which can analyse a user’s personalities based on their social/interest networks for a number of uses. In the next post, we will present our chosen idea, why we chose it, and what we will be doing next in this project.

The current situation

  • Time is valuable
    • Year after year more people are spending more time on social networking websites.
    • Some people spend their time to fulfil questionnaires to see what type of person they are; both in real life and on social networking websites.
    • Not all of these questionnaires on social networking sites are based on academic theories; lots of them are just for fun.
    • Particularly in Facebook, many of these applications have a range of 20 to 900 monthly active users.
  • Self-knowledge is necessary
    • There are three primary motives that lead us in the search for self-knowledge: Self-Enhancement, Accuracy and Consistency.
    • Self-knowledge is based on several different forms of information.
    • There is a connection between what we like and our personality.
    • Our favourite types of music, movie, books and such can represent our character.

The solution

  • In Facebook, as the most popular social networking website, people have a profile in which they can list their favourite music, books, movies, TV shows, Games.
  • There are also a variety of existing databases, which contain a significant amount of information about each of the mentioned media that a person likes. For instance, IMDB has an accurate database of movies; Amazon and Google Books have a database of books; iTunes can be a reference to identify the kind of music.

  • With the available information, a tool can be designed to give the person his/her personality analysis without asking questions.
  • Based on available data from the users we can offer them further products, which have a similar pattern.
  • Furthermore, we can help connect users with other people with complementary personalities.

The values to the users

  • People spend their time to get useful information that is based on scientific theories.
  • They can get recommendations that suit their taste.
  • They can find new people with the same interest or people that match their personality to become friends with.

As it is just a rough idea, it can be extended to offer more values for different stockholders.

Similar previous work

Getglue has some cool related features to look at.

Challenges and issues

  • The accuracy of the results of personality test could be controversial.
  • There is an overlap with Psychology which none of the group members has academic experience in it; therefore, more research would be needed.
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Idea 3 – Build up A Social Network for Runners

Posted on March 13, 2012 by kh4g09

In this third ideas post, Andy describes his ideas for a social network for a specific interest – fitness.

The Current Situation — Why do we need this

In current social networks, users share daily routines with their friends.
However, it is hard to filter out certain information for user’s specific interest. For example, running enthusiasts, existing social network cannot provide a suitable communication mechanism so that they can exchange running information easily, especially with more adoptions in runners with products like Nike+ and Fitbit. Currently, these two products allow users to share their data on Twitter or Facebook. Unfortunately, not everyone in those two social networks is interested in this data, the interactions between runners are intended to be weak.

The solution

Nike+ and Fitbit are the devices which can track users’ running activities, like distance, speed and calorie consumption. With Fitbit, it can even track sleeping time and the steps made during a day. Therefore, we can create a social network specifically for the runners. Fitbit has an official API while data in Nike+ needs some hacks to obtain. Deploying these two APIs so that data uploaded by users can be displayed or used in the network. As a result, a Nike+ user can have updates from a Fitbit user, vice versa. Therefore, they are not separated because of different tracking devices.

The values to the users

Because users’ running data is imported into the network, some machine learning metrics/algorithms can be utilised to analyse user behaviours and then the application can make recommendations to users. For example, suggesting nearby runners to users, suggesting diets and training plans and even provide gym membership comparisons. Users can have better advices for their exerises meanwhile they are able to meet new friends who are also interested in running.

Similar Apps

Path is a mobile application that just supports users upload their Nike+ data(12 March). However, it is still a Facebook-like application but focus more on mobile clients.

Challenges and Issues

As mentioned previously, retrieving data from Nike+ is not as easy as fetching it from Fitbit. Moreover, Nike+ and Fitbit themselves have already built up networks that allow users share running information. More importanly, keeping users actively using the application is not an easy task since Facebook, twitter and other social networks have taken their most of the time.

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Idea 2 – Interest-based Social Network

Posted on March 12, 2012 by hq1g08

In this second ideas post, Harry describes some ideas for an interest-based social network.

The current situation – Why do we need this?

The problem with a social networking site like Facebook is that users tend to have people added as friends they don’t usually interact with or never interact with. Also, users may ‘know’ their Facebook friends but apart from a select group of closer friends, they are not usually interested in what many have to say in their posts. As a consequence of this, if a user may see his friend make 5 posts a day, none of which really interest him or incite him to make a response, but if that friend does eventually make an interesting post, the user may not spot it – this is likely to be true with Facebook since its EdgeRank algorithm places ‘stories’ on user’s newsfeed based on how much they interact with each other amongst other things. If people were to make friends based on common interests instead, they will more likely interact with each other.

There is also a lack of platforms which help users make friends based on all of their interests, not just one; and any sites that do do this are primarily dating sites.

The Solution

Facebook is a social network for connecting people you already know or people you’ve met and based on the concept of triadic closure, it tries to connect people with weak ties using their strong ties by saying you have mutual friends.

Instead of connecting people based on who they know, a new social networking site could connect people based on their interests instead, with users talking about their interests instead of general happenings in life. In other words, it will be a platform for making new friends and interacting with them based on what they have in common. If done well, it could act as an additional social network alongside popular ones such as Facebook or Twitter.

interest-based idea image

There is an increased chance that two people will become friends if they attended or attend the same school, college, university, workplace or even an event. The interest-based social network could help new students to a university for example, find new friends who share the same interests – an alternative to joining multiple clubs or societies and only staying with a few of them.

Some more possible features:

  • Interest-based news feed – ‘stories’ are tagged with an interest. Users can filter interests.
  • Better chat facilities than existing sites like Facebook.
  • Can choose to take into account mutual friends when searching for or being recommended new friends.

Similar Sites/Apps

There seems to be no social networking websites with the aim of making friends which focus on people’s interests – anything with a similar concept all seem to be dating websites. However there are social networking sites/apps which focus on one interest, e.g. cooking, gaming, photography, etc. Below are some examples:

http://pinterest.com/ is interest based but lacks real ‘friend-making’ features.

An interesting read: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/18/beyond-facebook-the-rise-of-interest-based-social-networks/

Challenges and issues

  • Establishing a user base may be difficult.
  • Maintaining the user base, Encouraging users to interact with each other.
  • Getting good friend suggestions – there may be lots of people who share lots of the same interests.
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Idea 1 – Cooking Contest Facebook Application

Posted on March 12, 2012 by pt4g11

In our first of four ideas posts, Panos describes a Facebook-based cooking contest application.

The current situation – Why we build this?

Social networks have become an everyday activity in most people’s lives and many of them, are trying to find as much information as they can through social networks. Today in a social network like Facebook there are so many thinks to find that may interest you, by communicating with other users and share information with them. This is offered for academic reasons, social reasons, entertainment etc. It’s observed that many internet users are interested in cooking and this trend is followed also in social networks. A possible reason is that users in social networks have better interaction. So an application that has to do with food could attract a vast amount of users.

The solution

What we propose, is a Facebook application that allows users to share their recipes with their friends by posting photos of their food, and other users try to apply them for themselves. For example, with this application a person from UK could find new ideas from a person from China or from Italy and learn more about cooking not just by searching through web sites, but, by interacting with their friends.

Also this application gives us the opportunity for even more features that may attract more users. For instance, a cooking contest could take place. Users post their photos of their food and other users somehow vote for it by “like” or, with a number from 1 to 10 etc. Then we could have a winner of the week, of the month and finally of the year. If this application attracts many users, then at the end of the year we could organize a real cooking contest event let’s say with the best 20 contestants.

With this way we believe that many users will be interested in such idea not only for winning the contest, but just learn some new ideas and get help from other users.

The value to the users

Using such an application a user could have many benefits. Users that don’t know much about could join the application and learn easy from their friends and other users. Also users with more knowledge could go for the contest and compete with other experts. With this way, users may find more friends to share their ideas.

Similar Sites/Apps

There are many Sites and Facebook applications that have to do with cooking and recipes. None of them though seems to organize a contest. Some examples are shown below.

Challenges and issues

  • Is very hard to judge a food just by its look.
  • Many similar applications already exist.
  • Ethnical issues may be a problem.
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Introduction

Posted on March 12, 2012 by hq1g08

Hello everyone, and welcome to our blog. We are “Hive”, a group made up of members from a number of different disciplines within ECS, and this blog will be here to present our progress with the design and development of a new social networking application, tool or website as part of the COMP6051 module “Social Networking Technologies”.

Who Are We?

The group members are as follows:

Amir AryaArjmand  –       Kejun Huang       –       Harry Quach       –      Panos Tanilian

(Web Technology)   (Computer Science)   (IT in Organisations)   (Software Engineering)

Critical Friends:

Paul Booth (Web Science)

Natalia Delgado

Mentor:

Chris Phethean (Web and Internet Science Group)

What Next?

Our next few blog posts will describe various ideas for a new social networking application and it will be decided which one will be developed further for this project.

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