Web Science Conference in Koblenz

Just back from a great Web Science event in Koblenz. Social network analysis was by far the most dominant theme, and the full selection of papers can be accessed here.

Where were the business peeps though? A commercial perspective on some of these great ideas would have been very useful. For example, Karolin Kapler’s excellent presentation titled ‘social media as a new social fetish’ has significant relevance to marketers tempted to evaluate the impact of Facebook communities on the basis of ‘likes’. Karolin discussed the trend of ‘interpassivity’ where users substitute an online action for a ‘real’ one – for example, setting up an impressive selection of RSS feeds does not mean that any of them are actually read, or ‘liking’ a particular cause may not necessarily lead to a charitable donation. Businesses who are currently paying out cash or other benefits for ‘likes’ on their page ought to bear this phenomenon in mind…

For a tweet-sized flavour of the conference, check out the Alchemist analysis

And the Rhine boat trip was fabulous J

Originally published on www.lisaharrismarketing.com