The document discusses research on the use of Twitter at conferences. It finds that while Twitter was actively used by conference attendees, most tweets were irrelevant to non-attendees or lacked necessary context. Only 6% of tweets during the analyzed conference were deemed useful for outsiders. However, microblogging still has potential if tools allow archiving and offline search of tweets to retrieve and understand information from events. The document introduces Grabeeter, a tool that addresses these issues by allowing storage, retrieval and search of tweets without internet access.
Getting Granular on Twitter Tweets from a Conference and their Limited Usefulness for Non-Participants
1. Getting Granular on Twitter:
Tweets from a Conference and
Their Limited Usefulness for
Non-participants
Martin Ebner, Herbert Mühlburger, Sandra Schaffert, Mandy Schiefner,
Wolfgang Reinhardt, Steve Wheeler
2. Increase of
devices
http://www.flickr.com/photos/toddhiestand/197704394/
3. Mobile Learning?
http://flickr.com/photos/thomcochrane/416206133/
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
4. „Hence, learning materials must be designed
for easy access by the nomadic learners
during using mobile technology regardless
of where they are located and which network
infrastructure they are using to access
information“
Allen, 2007
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
5. Is microblogging a possibility for a specific
community to exchange ideas, interests and
information?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vividbreeze/480057824
6. Microblogging is a small-scale form of blogging, generally
made up of short, succinct messages, used by both users and
business to share news, post status updates and carry on
conversations Templeton, 2008
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418
7. http://www.jaiku.com
http://www.pownce.com(do
wn on December 15, 2008)
http://www.twitter.com
http://identi.ca/ http://www.plurk.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericrice/1815164756/
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
9. What the hell is twitter?
- 140 character
- from mobile, client or web interface
- Followers
- Direct messages
- @Replies and Retweets
- #Hashtags
- Open API
Getting Granular on Twitter
http://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
10. btw, thanks for the last
slide to ...
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
13. Different kind of people
using microblogs
Templeton, 2007
Java et al, 2008
Exchanger
Communicator
Daily Chatter Reporter
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/601808418
15. Twitter ok, but
how can we use it
for scientific
conferences?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leapfrog_photo/2532068489
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
16. Pre-studies – Use of Twitter at conferences
• ED-Media 2008
• Summer School 2008
• ED-Media 2009
http://www.flickr.com/photos/haagsuitburo/2342058525
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
18. „in the background we
discussed things more
deeply than the guys on the
stage“
versus
„Twitter can be distracting -
you pay less attention“
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuagedenuit/276092250
19. Number of Tweets at ED-Media 2009
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
20. „... top trend makers show who is the
heartbeat of this online community and
the key terms pointed out, what the
community was talking about“
http://www.flickr.com/photos/radekreks/316541927
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
21. Research outcomes –
Twitter can be used in the context of conferences:
• for communication amongst participants
• for communication amongst organizers
/presenters and audience
• for reporting to non-participants about the
conference
http://www.flickr.com/photos/haagsuitburo/2342058525
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
22. Research Question:
Is Twitter proper to report from a
conference in order to share the event
with the scientific community from
outside the conference?
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
23. Study:
•Educamp Hamburg 2010 (barcamp; unconference)
• Twitter was monitored from 5.2 – 4.3.2010 (used
Hashtag #ec10hh)
• In summary 2110 tweets were examined
• Two stage analysis – automatically and manually
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
24. Four categories of Tweets:
•Irrelevant Tweets
“Who found my drinking cup? #ec10hh”
• Administrative Tweets
“Wifi is not available #ec10hh”
• Topical Discussions
“nice idea of @estudyskills Aggregation of all
student weblogs at Tumblelog gives overview”
• Topical Tweets
“open-learning: initiative on OER usage for informal
education: http://u.nu/4a7ya #ec10hh”
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
26. Categories of Tweets (manual analysis)
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
27. Detailed Analysis of Tweets (manual analysis)
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
28. Discussion
•Keyword extraction (automatically analysis) did
not show any interesting result – no direct
correlation
• In average each user posted 6 tweets during
the conference period
• High number of Retweets (18%) – often not
useful without the necessary context
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
29. Main Outcome:
If we reduce the tweets to those
occurring during the conference period
(5th and 6th February) only 120 posts
are of interest at all, which relates to
about 6%
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
30. Practically, the obviously limited
usefulness of the tweets of the
EduCamp participants for interested
external participants evokes new
ideas for practical and effective
alternative usage of the tweets as well
as the need for appropriate tools.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/minaartwork/3695954155
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
31. Interpretation – Twitter usage follows other logic:
• usage as backchannel with limited comprehension
potential for outsiders
•usage of self promotion and profiling to generate
attention for own profile
• documentation and illustrating connections
• usage as a public notepad
• usage as an evaluation tool
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
32. Outlook:
How must a web-based application
that can also be used offline (without
Internet connection) for information
retrieval and knowledge discovery
based on a micro-content system like
Twitter look like?
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
34. Archive
and
Search
offline
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
35. Grabeeter allows ...
• Micro-content (tweets) is achievable
due to the fact that any tweet can be
retrieved at anytime from a local hard-
drive
• Micro-content is storable in a way that
the user can distinguish between
different events
• Micro-content is searchable along
keywords, hashtags, time frames as well
as different entities (URLs, @, ... )
Getting Granular on Twitter
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
36. Microblogging as
potential
for the future
- if we see it as a new
communication channel
Getting Granular on Twitter
http://www.flickr.com/photos/161/
Ebner,Mühlburger, Schaffert, Schiefner, Reinhardt, Wheeler
37. Grab and Search your Tweets
http://grabeeter.tugraz.at
martin.ebner@tugraz.at
Slides available at: http://elearningblog.tugraz.at
SOCIAL LEARNING
Computer and Information Services
Graz University of Technology
Martin Ebner
http://elearningblog.tugraz.at
mebner http://elearning.tugraz.at