SnS

In 2006, a headline from USA Today read: “Study: 25% of Americans Have No One to Confide In.”  The related story described that between 1985 and 2004, the number of people the average American felt they could discuss important matters with (known as a “close-tie”) had shrunk from three to two people.  The study referenced in the article had been published by the American Sociological Review, and was based on information generated through the General Social Survey (GSS) - a sociological survey used to collect data on demographic characteristics and attitudes of residents of the United States.  It was further outlined that one in four Americans had no close confidants at all, thus inferring that social isolation was on the rise.
The study has been retested several times, by scholars such as Mathew Brashears, to find out if the initial findings on the dwindling number of close ties were simply an anomaly, however each retest resulted in the same “shrinking network” conclusion.  It was not until a study was conducted that focused on the users of online Social Networking Sites (SNS) was conducted by the PEW Research Center, that an increase in close relationships of a new breed was observed.  Consequently, one must wonder if and how there may exist a connection between use of online SNS and offline relationships.  Specifically, does the use of online SNS act as a substitute or as a companion to offline social networks?  Furthermore, does the use of online SNS demonstrate a move against this finding and toward a growing core network?

This article seeks to build a digital ritual framework for the analysis of social gaming and social networking. The architectural design that intertwines Facebook and FarmVille is heightened by the formal and informal participation in ritual practices, which we theorize as digital rituals. Facebook and FarmVille provide a substantive case study that delves into the topical blurring of lines around the game space or magic circle. Through digital ethnographic methodologies the article identifies a number of digital ritual engagements that fit well with Grant McCracken's (1986) four different kinds of consumer rituals: exchange rituals, possession rituals, grooming rituals, and divestment rituals. Social gaming is contextualized as the extension of digital third places complicating distinctions between social network and social networking sites. Beyond simply phatic communication or decompression, FarmVille and Facebook through digital ritual participation are increasingly the manifestation of our networked interests, communities, and lives.

We analyzed data for a large number of small social network services (SNSs) and classified them in terms of their structures and communication patterns. Using this classification, we analyzed their features and found that most of them have small world, scale free, and negative assortativity characteristics. We also classified them on the basis of calculated network indexes and compared the four types. Finally, we classified their communication patterns and identified four types of friend networks: partial, parity, inclusive, and independent.

In an era where technology prevails, entrepreneurs as well as marketers see the need to keep up with the fast pace of change or risk being outdated. Gone are the days when a pure-bricks business model will thrive well in current market scenario. It is practically impossible to design a marketing strategy without considering social networks. Social media had become really important gradient in today's marketing mix in general and in promotion mix in particular. Adapting some form of marketing online through social media is a key node for all businesses, especially in an industry where trends constantly change such as fashion and handicrafts. The paper carries out empirical research to understand the effectiveness of social media as a marketing tool and an effort has been made to analyze the extent social media helps consumers in buying decision making. In addition strategies have been suggested for maximizing the effectiveness. Various statistical tests have been applied to support the research hypothesis.

The rapid adoption of social networking sites (SNSs) raises important questions about the social implications of such usage. Drawing on unique longitudinal data, surveying a representative sample of Norwegian online users (N = 2,000, age 15-75 years) in three annual waves (2008, 2009, and 2010), this study found a significantly higher score among SNS users in comparison to non-users in three out of four social capital dimensions: face-to-face interactions, number of acquaintances, and bridging capital. However, SNS-users, and in particular males, reported more loneliness than non-users. Furthermore, cluster analyses identified five distinct types of SNS users: Sporadics, Lurkers, Socializers, Debaters, and Advanced. Results indicate that Socializers report higher levels of social capital compared to other user types.

Social Networking Sites (SNS) are making people addictive because of their features like sharing and communication and has become part of daily life. These websites has made information to share in real time and communicate with learners and teachers in real time. In this paper, the author explores the effect of SNS in Sharing and Communication of information in Distance Education. SNS are used for entertaining and distracts learners from learning academic studies, but if used under proper supervision of teachers and if it is based on sound pedagogical principles it is very effective and useful in distance education where distance between teachers and learners are more and it takes much time for learners to communicate with their teachers and other learners.

The article explores and assesses the potential for democratic participation in Internet governance using social media sites and services. A framing question asks, “How can social media better serve coalition building and deliberative governance platforms on an international level?” This paper considers present-day challenges

This research work focused on the variability of global solar radiation over the area of Abakaliki,Ebonyi State (6o20’N, 8o06’E) located in South Eastern part of Nigeria for the rainy and dry seasons. The Pyranometer used for this measurement was locally developed and calibrated against a standard pyranometer, it competed favorably with the standard Einstrain Lungs Sensor. The global solar radiation was measured every five minutes from 08:00hours to 18:00hours during the dry season 2011 and rainy season in 2012. The measurements were carried out near the New Physics Laboratory Complex Ebonyi State University Abakaliki, Nigeria. Maximum Irradiances of 1095.10Wm-2 and 689.48Wm-2 recorded in Abakaliki during dry and rainy seasons respectively occurred between 12:00 – 14:00hours local time, whereas the minimum values of 9.20Wm-2 and 9.86Wm-2 respectively are recorded during the sunrise and sunset. Partly cloudy conditions in Abakaliki cause conspicuous oscillations in global solar radiation. This can be attributed to multiple reflections by nearby cloudy layers.The seasonal difference in the observed global solar radiation is 405.62Wm-2. Therefore solar energy devices can operate continuously in Abakaliki for up to 10 hours in a solar day from 8:00hours to 18:00hours which was the period covered during this investigation.

Due to increasing awareness for using clean energy and therefore greater demand for relying more on the renewable sources which solar photovoltaic are part of because they pose very little or no threat to the environment comparatively, there is growing pressure for reducing electricity generation costs from solar photovoltaic (PV) modules. Hence there is need for alternative new light absorbing materials that can provide conversion efficiencies which would be comparable to the current technologies based on crystalline silicon and CdTe or CIGS thin films at lower manufacturing costs and therefore providing cost effective solutions. In this paper we have evaluated the tin based absorber material (based on tin monosulfide; SnS) as the next generation of Photovoltaic cells that can provide the desired performance in the long term. Therefore it explores the potential use of tin mono-sulfide as photovoltaic material for conversion of light into electricity. Zinc Oxide (ZnO) thin films have been recognized as good candidates in photovoltaic devices acting as wide-band gap window layer. The results are presented through the numerical analysis done by AMPD-1D simulator tool to explore the possibility of using thin film and stable ZnO/SnS solar photovoltaic device with aim to achieve comparable conversion efficiencies. A baseline structure of SnS cell was explored in this work with thickness of SnS absorber layer up to 3 μm and .100 μm ZnO layer and showed reasonable efficiencies over 17%. At the end of our research we also suggest that future research efforts in device development should utilize the better suited back contact material (other than the rear metal contact copper that is investigated in this study), so that the efficiency of the device can be enhanced further.

Since the advents of emerging technologies such as social media and web 2.0 tools, learning environments are getting more interactive, productive, and contextual than ever before. This is because not only have the technologies such as Internet, mobile, cloud computing, and learning circumstances been incredibly improved in the past decade but also individuals’ consciousness of utilizing these technologies in their educational experiences has been dramatically changed. However, the notion of integrating web 2.0 social technologies into educational environments may not be developed by individual educators and learners as compared to the speed of the development and change of social technologies and learning environments. This paper explores the trends of technology in education and related literature, and presents the fundamentals of Web 2.0 social technologies and how they connect with learning theories with the purpose of facilitating educational experiences.

At a time when news organizations are struggling to grab the attention of audiences in a media-saturated environment, social networking sites (SNS) have created novel opportunities for journalists to connect with followers online—raising questions about how types of social media use might be associated with forging greater connection with users. Just as satire has proven a potent force for attracting audiences to fake news TV programs, it’s reasonable to consider that humor might be an emerging tool for connection in social media spaces where journalists increasingly conduct their work. Through a content analysis of more than 22,000 tweets (or microblog posts), this study examines the extent to which the 430 most-followed journalists on Twitter are using humor—and how such use is associated with other forms of engagement on Twitter. Findings indicate that a journalist’s use of humor is closely associated with sharing opinion and personal life details, and engaging in interpersonal discussion. Moreover, the use of humor is positively related to a journalist’s level of activity on Twitter, suggesting that journalists who become more accustomed to this social space are more apt to adopt its milieu of informality, conversation, and humor. Finally, journalists from less elite news organizations tend to use humor more frequently. These and other findings are discussed in light of challenges facing the journalism field as it negotiates questions of participation and professionalism in digital media spaces.

Online social networking sites like, Facebook, Google and Twitter are suggested to share their public and personal information and make social relationship or connection with individual or people who can be even strangers. Existing social networking facilities recommends friends to users based on their social graphs, which might not be suitable to reflect a user's preferences on friend selection in their real life. In this system, human interest based friend recommendation system for social networks, which recommends friends to users based on his/her life styles instead of their social graphs and determine life styles of users from user-centric sensor data and measures the comparison of life styles between users and this scheme recommends friends to users if their way of lifestyle has high similarity. Social networking sites also include sharing of files or data among the users or group of users. Data sharing is not easier and an accurate analysis on the shared data provides more benefits to both the society and individuals. Data sharing with a large number of participants must take into account many issues, that is efficiency, data integrity and privacy of data owner. Also ranking is done based on searching of users profile information. Finally, this system also take part a feedback mechanism to improve the users satisfaction and recommendation accuracy.

In recent times we have witnessed the fundamental impacts that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have had on the outcomes of contentious political confrontations. In this paper, we analyze the role played by Internet-based and cellular ICTs in Moldova's Revolution of April 2009. Specifically, we identify what, why, and how technologies were used during various phases of the uprising. Our findings show that: 1) the protesters organized their initial mobilization through social network services (SNS) and short message service (SMS); 2) Twitter was mostly used during later phases of the revolutionthe active street protests and the subsequent information warfor communication about the conflict both locally and globally; and 3) through skillful use of new Internet-based ICTs, it is possible to conduct a successful revolution without noticeable prior offline organization. Theoretical and practical implications for the use of ICTs in contentious political environments are also discussed.

Twitter, the most popular microblogging service by the end of 2009, has gained much interest among Computer-Mediated Communication scholars and practitioners. As a new social medium, Twitter shows distinguished characteristics such as text-based posts of up to 140 characters delivered in real-time, and via multiple access modes including the Web, SMS, and mobile device applications. Interestingly, and in spite of an explosive growth in 2009, Twitter is also experiencing higher dropout rates compared to other social networking sites giving rise to the term Twitter Quitter. This study will examine which factors influence Twitter Quitters in their decision to discontinue Twitter's use through the use of perceived motivations and innovation related constructs. Uses and Gratifications (UG) and Diffusion of Innovation theory (IDT) are employed to frame the theoretical background. Also, this study will offer support for the effects of mobile device usage to access Twitter on self-reported motivations and perceived outcomes of using Twitter. An online survey will be used to collect data from 300 undergraduate students at a large U.S. mid-western university. A Partial Least Squares (PLS)-based data analysis will be used to provide support for which constructs explain differences between Twitter users and Twitter quitters. Also, the influence of mobile device use on the continuance or discontinuance of Twitter will be examined. Implications for both theory and practice, as well as suggestions for further research will also be presented.

Web Usage Mining the data mining techniques to extract exciting usage patterns from SNS data, in order to understand and serve the needs of users in an efficient manner. Usage data captures the origin and the identity of the user along with the browsing behavior at the social web site so that they can serve well. It is further classified depending on the type of data to be mine. This paper proposes an algorithm which takes advantages of both apriori growth algorithm and Fp split algorithm and shows the experimental results which shows the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

Twitter, the most popular microblogging service by the end of 2009, has gained much interest among Computer-Mediated Communication scholars and practitioners. As a new social medium, Twitter shows distinguished characteristics such as text-based posts of up to 140 characters delivered in real-time, and via multiple access modes including the Web, SMS, and mobile device applications. Interestingly, and in spite of an explosive growth in 2009, Twitter is also experiencing higher dropout rates compared to other social networking sites giving rise to the term Twitter Quitter.
This study will examine which factors influence Twitter Quitters in their decision to discontinue Twitter’s use through the use of perceived motivations and innovation related constructs. Uses and Gratifications (UG) and Diffusion of Innovation theory (IDT) are employed to frame the theoretical background. Also, this study will offer support for the effects of mobile device usage to access Twitter on self-reported motivations and perceived outcomes of using Twitter .
An online survey will be used to collect data from 300 undergraduate students at a large U.S. mid-western university. A Partial Least Squares (PLS)-based data analysis will be used to provide support for which constructs explain differences between Twitter users and Twitter quitters. Also, the influence of mobile device use on the continuance or discontinuance of Twitter will be examined. Implications for both theory and practice, as well as suggestions for further research will also be presented.

This study explored the explanatory power of Uses and Gratifications (UG) and the Diffusion of Innovation theory (IDT) in describing Twitter phenomenon. Effects of mobile access and perceived outcomes of using Twitter were also examined and comparison of active and inactive users revealed which needs are likely to result in Twitter’s discontinuance if unmet. Online survey and data analysis with Partial Least Squares (PLS) revealed that the needs for Entertainment, Relaxation, the service’s Visibility and Compatibility were strong predictors of Twitter’s usage. ANOVA highlighted that the same dimensions were significantly lower among inactive ‘tweeters’, suggesting that the same factors may be responsible for both adoption and continuance. Mobile access of Twitter was found to be a catalyst for continued use. There is a need for the combined use of UG and IDT in describing Twitter’s adoption, with personal needs and the service’s characteristics being the use drivers by different aud...

Recently the use of social network sites have emerged as one of the most important and time-consuming online activities. In the large and diversified social network scenario Facebook emerged as one of the most important sites at least in the United States and in Europe. In the Facebook-based gaming scene Playfish, a UK based company, has recently gained a leading position with more than 50 million registered players. The paper will analyze these five games, observing, starting from Playfish’s games, on Facebook games use the social network site and the social relationships between players as a core element for the game experience. In SNS several different contexts of life seems to exist one near the others and eventually overlapping. Closest friends with co-workers, relatives with ex-schoolmates: the paper will present how the new SNS environment can be used for gaming and how gaming activities change when they enter the collapsed context of SNSs.
Author Keywords:
SOCIAL NATWORKS, SOCIAL GAMES, SOCIAL CAPITALS, ONLINE GAMING, FACEBOOK

In this article I assess the challenges and opportunities of using online social network services as international platforms for development and for networking global civil society. A human rights framework and information ethics approach are used to identify principles as they are transposed to the internet, to evaluate dominant trends in social network sites (SNSs) and to theorise how human rights might be embedded into the technical design of new and existing online social networks. The central research question is ‘how can SNSs affirm and uphold a “people centered, inclusive and development-oriented information society” (WSIS 2005)?’ Ideal values and outcomes of a public service social network include interoperability, privacy, transparency, autonomy, participatory design, cultural and linguistic diversity, support for oral cultures and non-technical populations, open access and the commons. Affordances and functions of existing SNSs include sociability, sharing, interaction, homophily, social capital and power, and network effects. Examining tensions between values and affordances, public and private interests, can help guide the design and implementation of SNSs for international networking and development.

All of the seven candidates running in the 2011 Irish presidential election employed the internet and social media to communicate with voters. Of these candidates, Seán Gallagher's campaign, in an effort to break from dependence upon traditional media, relied most heavily upon Web 2.0 and its associated social media. We interview the officials in charge of media for that campaign, to discover the pros and cons of relying upon the internet and SNS to run an election. We examine how the combining of online social media with traditional media, to produce a new form of hybridized media, is transforming the political communications environments and influenced the waxing and waning of Gallagher's election prospects.

With the growing use of social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, privacy issues have become a major concern especially for children nowadays. There is no doubt that this new form of communication is gaining popularity nowadays. SNS offer many benefits such as reconnecting long lost friends and communicating with each other by just sitting in front of the screen. However, it raises many ethical and social issues and privacy is one of them. Users are often exposed to various threats and violations because they do not know how to protect their personal information from being revealed to strangers. Hence, a system is needed to assist children in managing and controlling their privacy settings. The privacy management system proposed in this study is based on a rule-based expert system which is used to emulate human intelligence by using rules and conditions. The rules, which are the main component in a rule-based system, are used to determine the suitable privacy settings for children. The privacy settings are based on the recommendation obtained from a questionnaire given to the parents who have a Facebook account and are aware of how to manage and protect their privacy.

From an article to be published in "Cine Tectonica: Film on the Faultline," a collection of essays on earthquakes and cinema edited by Alan Wright (University of Canterbury) and due out from Intellect Ltd. in 2013.

This paper considers audio-visual representations of Japan's March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters in exploring the degree to which citizen reportage leveraged by mobile technology and social media give voice to those affected, and how these new forms of fragmented documentary call into question the medium of nonfiction cinema in its traditional filmic appearances. Finding recurrent emphasis on salvaged family photographs and depictions of amateur photography in 3.11 documentary cinema of potential significance, we trace these elements through the work of Toshi Fujiwara, Yuki Kokubo, Yojyu Matsubayashi, Koichi Omiya, and Lucy Walker. Surveying their short and feature length pieces covering the quake and its aftermath, such observation leads to case studies in stock footage manipulation, politics of the filmed photo, outsider interview ethics, and the position of landscape allegory and its past uses in theoretical critiques of the state-corporate complex. Focused on Japan’s visual culture in particular, but of relevance to a global community with increasing involvement in the production of the media they consume, yet little say in its rhetorical representation, the paper aims to test a notion that building a personal cinema can aid a culture’s reconstruction process following cataclysmic events.

To the literature, it is seen that there are some studies demonstrating the relationship between FOMO and problematic smartphone use, or FOMO and smartphone addiction. However, no study has yet been found that explains the relationship between nomophobia and FOMO. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the effect of FOMO on nomophobia by investigating the relation between nomophobia and FOMO. No mobile phobia, i.e., nomophobia, is about a contemporary fear of not having a chance to communicate via mobile phone, while Fear of Missing Out, i.e., FOMO, is known to be correlated with the problematic use of social networking sites (SNSs). This descriptive study is a correlational study adopting a correlational survey model. The data were collected from a convenient sample of 538 university students via nomophobia questionnaire (NMP-Q) and FOMO scales as data collection tools. The results show that a positive moderate level of the relationship was found between Nomophobia and FOMO levels.

In this paper we introduce a new model to represent an interconnected network of networks. This model is fundamental to reason about the real organization of on-line social networks, where users belong to and interact on different networks at the same time. In addition we extend traditional SNA measures to deal with this multiplicity of networks and we apply the model to a real dataset extracted from two microblogging sites.

Abstract This study assesses whether Facebook users have different 'connection strategies,'a term which describes a suite of Facebook-related relational communication activities, and explores the relationship between these connection strategies and social capital. Survey data (N= 450) from a random sample of undergraduate students reveal that only social information-seeking behaviors contribute to perceptions of social capital; connection strategies that focus on strangers or close friends do not. We also find that ...

From an article to be published in "Cine Tectonica: Film on the Faultline," a collection of essays on earthquakes and cinema edited by Alan Wright (University of Canterbury) and due out from Intellect Ltd. in 2013.

This paper considers audio-visual representations of Japan's March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters in exploring the degree to which citizen reportage leveraged by mobile technology and social media give voice to those affected, and how these new forms of fragmented documentary call into question the medium of nonfiction cinema in its traditional filmic appearances. Finding recurrent emphasis on salvaged family photographs and depictions of amateur photography in 3.11 documentary cinema of potential significance, we trace these elements through the work of Toshi Fujiwara, Yuki Kokubo, Yojyu Matsubayashi, Koichi Omiya, and Lucy Walker. Surveying their short and feature length pieces covering the quake and its aftermath, such observation leads to case studies in stock footage manipulation, politics of the filmed photo, outsider interview ethics, and the position of landscape allegory and its past uses in theoretical critiques of the state-corporate complex. Focused on Japan’s visual culture in particular, but of relevance to a global community with increasing involvement in the production of the media they consume, yet little say in its rhetorical representation, the paper aims to test a notion that building a personal cinema can aid a culture’s reconstruction process following cataclysmic events.

Non-media affiliated sports blogs represent the largest contingent of sports blogs today, yet bloggers continue to face accessibility problems when it comes to coverage. Most professional sports teams employ media relations personnel who serve as gatekeepers, deciding who receives access and who does not. Such choices are often based on the abstract concept of trust, which this study focused on. The survey results from 126 professional baseball gatekeepers reinforce the fact that accessibility is most likely to restricted for bloggers, especially those not connected with a media outlet. However, this study sought to determine the differences, if any, between the levels of trust gatekeepers place in traditional news media and bloggers as well as how such disparities might impact accessibility.

ABSTRACT Professional sports teams have struggled to incorporate social network sites into their existing branding and media strategies, wrestling with issues of access and trust. This case study examines an innovative effort by one organization, Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians, to create a physical space for online discussion about their team. In that space, called the “Social Suite,” local social media users were given exclusive access to watch the team’s games from a suite, along with access to team staff and information. Through in‐depth interviews and participant observation this study found suite users saw themselves not as members of the media, but as active participants in the team’s own online marketing efforts. This self‐perception corresponded with team executives’ goal to use the suite as a way to reverse negative online discussion about the team by creating a network of influential “brand ambassadors” who spread positive perceptions about the organization. This novel approach—one that illustrates the changing landscape of media and communication practice and theory—may serve as a model for other sports teams and businesses as they work to integrate the public into their digital and online efforts.

A social network can become bases for information infrastructure in the future. It is important to extract social networks that are not biased. Providing a simple means for users to register their social relation is also important. We propose a method that combines various approaches to extract social networks. Especially, three kinds of networks are extracted; user-registered Know link network, Web-mined Web link network, and face-to-face Touch link network. In this paper, the combination of social network extraction for communities is described, and the analysis on the extracted social networks is shown.

The SnS films were grown on glass substrates using the thermal evaporation technique at different substrate temperatures
Ts
varied from 20 to 300°C, and their physical properties were studied with appropriate techniques. While increasing Ts, the sulfur
content in the films decreased and the Sn to S atomic percent ratio increased from 1.01 to 1.42. The structural studies showed that
most of the crystallites in the films were grown along
111 direction and their grain size increased between 18 and 41 nm with
the increase of Ts. The SnS films grown at Ts = 300°C exhibited considerably low electrical resistivity of 43
cm with an
average grain size of 40 nm. These films also exhibited a direct optical bandgap of 2.0 eV with a high absorption coefficient,
106 cm−1. These results indicate that the physical properties of nanocrystalline SnS films are comparable to the properties of
bulk as well as microstructured SnS films and are suitable for photovoltaic or nanoquantum-well device applications

The rapid increase of the bandwidth demand have led to the growth of optical communications which are used for implementing not only backbones but also access networks. Due to the sensitivity of the applications relying on optical networks, security becomes a major concern. The paper evaluates the performance of the optical firewall proposed in [6] which is able to protect Optical Burst Switched (OBS) networks against physical layer attacks. We first describe the architecture of the optical firewall. Then, we present the design of the BHP (Burst Header Packet) waiting module which is the main component of the optical firewall architecture. Finally, we propose a simulation of the waiting module in order to evaluate the performance of the firewall.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6149836

n this paper we introduce a new model to represent an interconnected network of networks. This model is fundamental to reason about the real organization of on-line social networks, where users belong to and interact on different networks at the same time. In addition we extend traditional SNA measures to deal with this multiplicity of networks and we apply the model to a real dataset extracted from two microblogging sites.

Professional sports teams have struggled to incorporate social network sites into their existing branding and media strategies, wrestling with issues of access and trust. This case study examines an innovative effort by one organization, Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians, to create a physical space for online discussion about their team. In that space, called the “Social Suite,” local social media users were given exclusive access to watch the team’s games from a suite, along with access to team staff and information. Through in‐depth interviews and participant observation this study found suite users saw themselves not as members of the media, but as active participants in the team’s own online marketing efforts. This self‐perception corresponded with team executives’ goal to use the suite as a way to reverse negative online discussion about the team by creating a network of influential “brand ambassadors” who spread positive perceptions about the organization. This novel approach—one that illustrates the changing landscape of media and communication
practice and theory—may serve as a model for other sports teams and businesses as they work to integrate the public into their digital and online efforts.

Social networking sites (SNSs) have applied personalized filtering to deal with overwhelmingly irrelevant social data. However, due to the focus of accuracy, the personalized filtering often leads to Bthe filter bubble^problem where the users can only receive information that matches their pre-stated preferences but fail to be exposed to new topics. Moreover, these SNSs are black boxes, providing no transparency for the user about how the filtering mechanism decides what is to be shown in the activity stream. As a result, the user's usage experience and trust in the system can decline. This paper presents an interactive method to visualize the personalized filtering in SNSs. The proposed visualization helps to create awareness, explanation, and control of personalized filtering to alleviate the Bfilter bubble^problem and increase the users' trust in the system. Three user evaluations are presented. The results show that users have a good understanding about the filter bubble visualization, and the visualization can increase users' awareness of the filter bubble, understandability of the filtering mechanism and to a feeling of control over the data stream they are seeing. The intuitiveness of the design is overall good, but a context sensitive help is also preferred. Moreover, the visualization can provide users with better usage experience and increase users' trust in the system.

Twitter, the most popular microblogging service by the end of 2009, has gained much interest among Computer-Mediated Communication scholars and practitioners. As a new social medium, Twitter shows distinguished characteristics such as text-based posts of up to 140 characters delivered in real-time, and via multiple access modes including the Web, SMS, and mobile device applications. Interestingly, and in spite of an explosive growth in 2009, Twitter is also experiencing higher dropout rates compared to other social networking sites giving rise to the term Twitter Quitter. This study will examine which factors influence Twitter Quitters in their decision to discontinue Twitter's use through the use of perceived motivations and innovation related constructs. Uses and Gratifications (UG) and Diffusion of Innovation theory (IDT) are employed to frame the theoretical background. Also, this study will offer support for the effects of mobile device usage to access Twitter on self-reported motivations and perceived outcomes of using Twitter. An online survey will be used to collect data from 300 undergraduate students at a large U.S. mid-western university. A Partial Least Squares (PLS)-based data analysis will be used to provide support for which constructs explain differences between Twitter users and Twitter quitters. Also, the influence of mobile device use on the continuance or discontinuance of Twitter will be examined. Implications for both theory and practice, as well as suggestions for further research will also be presented.