Social Networking on Mobile Environment on top of PeerHood

Social networking and social networking sites have gained popularity among internet users during the past few years. Social networks fulfill the need of users to stay connected to friends and other people interested in the same issues. Combining social networks to the mobile environment is a growing interest of mobile device users as it allows the users to be in their online social community despite their mobility. This thesis highlights the basics of mobile environment, social networking and PeerHood and introduces a new approach of social networking on mobile environment, which is a new concept in mobile social networking. This approach is based on dynamic group discovery in accordance to some common user interests and management in the PeerHood environment. A reference implementation of a social networking application built on top of PeerHood is presented and it is tested and analyzed to understand the social networking on mobile environment and the new concept of dynamic group discovery in it.

The potential of social networking sites in inpatriate adjustment

People make up one of the most important resources for a corporation and therefore it has to continuously seek an ever more diverse and international workforce. Inpatriation is another way of utilizing foreign expertise in a corporation. An inpatriate refers to a person that is on an international assignment at the headquarters of a corporation, where they have been sent either from a subsidiary abroad or from a third country outside the corporation. Strengthening the social network of the inpatriate and their family contributes to the adjustment process and furthermore the success of the work assignment. As social networking sites are currently the fastest developing personal networking tools in the world, it is interesting to see how they can help in inpatriate adjustment. The objective of this thesis is to explore the potential of social networking sites (SNS) in inpatriate adjustment. The main objective can be divided into three sub objectives: 1. What is SNS used for during the inpatriate assignment? 2. What are the inpatriates’ motivations to use SNS? 3. Could the three facets of adjustment (work, interaction and general) be gained through SNS? This qualitative study utilizes the theme interview data collection method and the thematic analysis approach for analysing the interview data. From the interviews with five Indian inpatriates in Finland the most mentioned uses of SNS were related to participating (sharing opinions, recommendations and discussing things and connecting to friends, family and colleagues) and consuming (collecting information for work and free time), the least mentioned use of SNS was producing (posting videos, photos and updates). An interesting finding was that the five interviewees did not use SNS for purely entertainment motives at all during their assignment. This thesis found that all three facets of adjustment could potentially be gained through SNS.

Social Networking Sites as a part of Medical Device Manufacturer's Marketing Communications

The purpose of the thesis is to examine how a medical device manufacturer can exploit social networking sites as a part of its everyday marketing communications. The ultimate goal is to create an ideal process of developing marketing communications in social networking sites as a medical device manufacturer with the help of theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience. Theoretical part examines the traditional process of developing marketing communications, defines social networking sites and presents marketing activities carried out on these sites as well as introduces the characteristics of healthcare technology industry. Empirical part is collected through participation in medical device manufacturer’s marketing operations and by observing effects of different factors and actions on social media marketing. In addition, completed interviews and a meeting with company’s personnel have been utilized for data collection. This part offers comprehensive information on the examined company’s current marketing operations, industry, and activities carried out on social networking sites. As a result of the thesis a comprehensive process description of integrating and using social networking sites as a part of company’s marketing communications was formed. With the help of the process description factors and actions which have an effect on marketing operations in social networking sites are presented and methods for further developing these activities are introduced.

Re-shaping the Resourcing: Recruitment in Social Media

Social media is very current topic in today’s society and organisations. In the times of economic challenges, companies are looking for efficient ways to resource workforce. In addition, there is competition of competent workforce in employment markets. Employer image plays important role in recruitment as people seek to organisations they find interesting and have a reputation as a good employer. This study concerns the discussion on utilising social media in recruitment and employer image in a corporate enterprise. I will find solutions how to utilize social media in recruitment, in which channels and methods that can be done and what these actions require from a company doing social recruitment. I bring up the discussion and challenges that relate to starting to take social media into use in an organization overall and in recruitment. The qualitative material has been gathered with interviews of eighteen persons and the material available about the topic in the enterprise intranet. According to the study, social media is seen both as an opportunity to reach large amount of people quickly and cost-efficiently, but then again it brings news aspects for controlling the employer image and communication towards the audience. Taking social media into use as part of recruiters and managers daily work requires both finding the right channels and attention to the internal communication culture and resourcing. Social recruitment requires a strategy and a proper plan to be able to work in a company. There are several social media channels that enable to reach people, but they don’t do the social recruitment alone.

Social-business tensions and their management in social enterprise: evidence from Finland.

This thesis aims to provide insight into the social-business tensions the social enterprises face in their operation and how they manage them. The social-business tensions are examined from four theoretical perspectives using triangulation approach. The theoretical lenses chosen are organizational identity, stakeholder theory, paradox theory and institutional theory. The theories aim to clarify, how the tensions are formed, how they appear and how they are managed in social enterprises. One viewpoint of this thesis is to examine the competence of these theories in explaining the social-business tensions in practise. The qualitative data was collected by interviewing persons from the management of two social enterprises. The empirical evidence of this thesis suggests that the appearing of social-business tensions varies between the social enterprises and they can be seen both as an advantage and as a challenge. Most of the social-business tensions arise from the enterprise’s multiple incoherent objectives, their stakeholders’ various demands and the differing understanding of the company’s central operation among the members of the organization. According to this thesis, the theories of organizational identity, stakeholder, paradox and institution are all able to provide unique insight into the identification and management of the social-business tensions. However, the paradox theory turned out to be the most abstract of the theories and thus being the farthest from the practise.

Post-industrial 2.0 – Social Web as the second coming of the post-industrial society

This study presents a review of theories of the so-called post-industrial society, and proposes that the concept of post-industrial society can be used to understand the recent developments of the World Wide Web, often described as Web 2.0 or social Web. The study combines theories ranging from post-war management science and cultural studies to software development, and tries to build a holistic view of the development of the post-industrial society, and especially the Internet. The discourse on the emergence of a post-industrial society after the World Wars has addressed the ways in which the growing importance of information, and innovations in digital communications technology, are changing our society. It is furthermore deeply connected with the discourse on the postmodern society, which emphasizes cultural fragmentation, intertextuality, and pluralism. The Internet age is characterized by increasing masses of information that are managed through various technologies. While 1990s Internet technologies often used the network as a traditional broadcasting channel with added interactivity, Web 2.0 technologies are specifically designed to utilize the network model by facilitating communication between various services and devices, and analyzing the relationships between users and objects in order to produce intelligent insight. The wide adoption of the Internet, and recently of Internet-enabled mobile devices, is furthermore continuously producing new ways of communicating, consuming, and producing. Applications of the social Web, such as social media or social networking services, are permanently changing our traditional social, cultural, and economic practices. The study first presents an overview of the post-industrial society, the Internet, and the concept of Web 2.0. Then the concept of social Web is described with an analysis of the term social media, the brief histories of the interactive Web and social networking services, and a description of the concept ―long tail‖, used to represent the masses of information available in the Web that do not receive mainstream attention. Finally, methods for retrieving and filtering information, modeling social and cultural relationships, and communicating with customers, are presented.

Forecasting with social media – Using Facebook likes to predict the results of the 2015 Finnish Parliamentary elections

Already one-third of the human population uses social media on a daily basis. The biggest social networking site Facebook has over billion monthly users. As a result, social media services are now recording unprecedented amount of data on human behavior. The phenomenon has certainly caught the attention of scholars, businesses and governments alike. Organizations around the globe are trying to explore new ways to benefit from the massive databases. One emerging field of research is the use of social media in forecasting. The goal is to use data gathered from online services to predict offline phenomena. Predicting the results of elections is a prominent example of forecasting with social media, but regardless of the numerous attempts, no reliable technique has been established. The objective of the research is to analyze how accurately the results of parliament elections can be forecasted using social media. The research examines whether Facebook “likes” can be effectively used for predicting the outcome of the Finnish parliament elections that took place in April 2015. First a tool for gathering data from Facebook was created. Then the data was used to create an electoral forecast. Finally, the forecast was compared with the official results of the elections. The data used in the research was gathered from the Facebook walls of all the candidates that were running for the parliament elections and had a valid Facebook page. The final sample represents 1131 candidates and over 750000 Facebook “likes”. The results indicate that creating a forecast solely based on Facebook “likes” is not accurate. The forecast model predicted very dramatic changes to the Finnish political landscape while the official results of the elections were rather moderate. However, a clear statistical relationship between “likes” and votes was discovered. In conclusion, it is apparent that citizens and other key actors of the society are using social media in an increasing rate. However, the volume of the data does not directly increase the quality of the forecast. In addition, the study faced several other limitations that should be addressed in future research. Nonetheless, discovering the positive correlation between “likes” and votes is valuable information that can be used in future studies. Finally, it is evident that Facebook “likes” are not accurate enough and a meaningful forecast would require additional parameters.

Developing a user-centric event management system

This thesis describes the development of a software requirements specification for a user-centric event management system. The system is set to satisfy three goals: adding value for the event attendees, adding value for the event organizer, and reducing the costs of arranging and running an event. The requirements are identified by researching the prescriptive traits of event business and the current state of the case company and its environment. First the professional and human needs for events are scrutinized. Second, some recent reports about the current trends in the event business are reviewed. Then the event life cycle is presented using the model of new service development, and online promotion of events and especially word-of-mouth marketing receive special attention. Events are also regarded from the perspective of social networks and social media. The case company’s current state and its competitors are reviewed to formulate the needs which the system should fulfil. Then the currently available solutions for social media oriented event management are reviewed. The result is a set of functional and non-functional requirements. The functional requirements are categorized into social media, social networking, event personalization, event management, and system administration features. The specified features and non-functional requirements satisfy the three goals set for the system.

Datanomiopiskelijat sosiaalisen median käyttäjinä

Tutkimukseni aiheena on tarkastella datanomiopiskelijoita sosiaalisen median käyttäjinä. Sosiaalisen median käyttö opetuksessa on nykypäivänä jo aika yleistä. Erilaisia sosiaalisen median keinoja käytetään jo kaikilla oppiasteilla. Opettajan on tärkeää tuntea eri palvelujen tarkoitukset ja soveltuvuus opetustilanteeseen. Työn tarkoitus on tutkia sosiaalisen median palveluja kuudesta eri näkökulmasta, jotka tukevat opetusta ja oppimista. Näitä ovat verkostoitumispalvelut, virtuaalimaailmat, sisällöllinen kirjoittaminen, verkko-oppimisympäristöt, videoverkkopalvelut ja verkkoviestintäpalvelut. Työssä tutkitaan Lappeenrannan Palvelualojen koulun datanomiopiskelijoiden sosiaalisen median palvelujen käyttämistä sekä kysytään käyttöaktiivisuutta ja mielipidettä palvelujen käyttämiseen opetuksessa. Tutkimustulokset antavat kuvan siitä, minkälaisia sosiaalisen median palveluja opiskelijat käyttävät. Tutkimus osoittaa, että datanomiopiskelijat käyttävät sosiaalisen median palveluja ahkerasti, erityisesti wikiä, blogia ja pikaviestimiä sekä Moodle-oppimisympäristöä. Tutkimuksen perusteella voidaan kehittää opetuksen laatua ja opetusmenetelmiä sosiaalisen median opetuskäyttöä tukevaksi. Opettajan rooli muuttuu sosiaalisen median palvelujen käytön myötä yhä enemmän ohjaavaksi ja tasa-arvoiseksi opiskelijoiden kanssa. Opetus muuttuu yhteisöllisemmäksi ja verkostoituneemmaksi. Opettajan ja opiskelijoiden vuorovaikutustaitojen merkitys korostuu. Myös tulevaisuuden haasteet ja ennen kaikkea mahdollisuudet nousevat esiin. Opetuksen suunnittelussa on hyvä pystyä huomioimaan uudet mahdollisuudet ja käyttää niitä kattavasti.

Yliopisto-opiskelijoiden sosiaalisen median käyttö, sosiaalinen verkostoitumien ja stereotypiat eri koulutusohjelmien opiskelijoista

Tämä diplomityö tutkii Lappeenrannan teknillisen yliopiston opiskelijoiden sosiaalisen median palvelujen ja sovellusten käyttöä. Se tekee myös selvyyttä tavoista, joiden avulla opiskelijat muodostavat sosiaalisen verkostonsa muihin opiskelijoihin ja muihin ihmisiin. Se tutkii myös opiskelijoiden stereotypioita ja mielikuvia eri koulutusohjelmien opiskelijoista. Työn päätarkoitus on tutkia sosiaalisen median roolia opiskelijoiden elämässä. Tutkimustyö tehtiin verkossa täytettävällä kyselylomakkeella. Tutkimuksen tulokset esitellään työn loppupuoliskolla. Alkupuolisko esittelee sosiaalisen median käsitteitä ja palveluita sekä valaisee tietotekniikan roolia sosiaalisessa mediassa. Se käsittelee myös sosiaalista verkostoitumista opiskelijan näkökulmasta ja esittelee aikaisemmin tehtyjä tutkimuksia opiskelijoiden sosiaalisen median käytöstä.

Service Description Creation Empowerment to Mobile End Users

Increasing usage of Web Services has been result of efforts to automate Web Services discovery and interoperability. The Semantic Web Service descriptions create basis for automatic Web Service information management tasks such as discovery and interoperability. The discussion of opportunities enabled by service descriptions have arisen in recent years. The end user has been considered only as a consumer of services and information sharing occurred from one service provider to public in service distribution. The social networking has changed the nature of services. The end user cannot be seen anymore only as service consumer, because by enabling semantically rich environment and right tools, the end user will be in the future the producer of services. This study investigates the ways to provide for end users the empowerment to create service descriptions on mobile device. Special focus is given to the changed role of the end user in service creation. In addition, the Web Services technologies are presented as well as different Semantic Web Service description approaches are compared. The main focus in the study is to investigate tools and techniques to enable service description creation and semantic information management on mobile device.

Sosiaaliset mediat sisäisessä viestinnässä

Tässä kandidaatintyössä käsitellään sosiaalista mediaa yritysten sisäisessä viestinnässä. Määritellään mitä sosiaalinen media on, tutkitaan sen käyttäjäryhmiä ja luokkia, tutustutaan Web 2.0 käsitteeseen, esitellään verkostopalveluita ja verrataan näitä kaikki perinteisiin medioihin. Johtopäätöksissä tuodaan esille sosiaalisen median luonnetta, käyttökohteita yrityksessä, parhaita sovelluksia sekä suositellaan käyttötapoja. Lopuksi työssä käsitellään sosiaalisen median käytön ongelmia ja niiden ratkaisuja.

Sosiaaliset verkkoyhteisöt osana teollisyrityksen markkinointiviestintää

Tämän kandidaatintyön tarkoituksena oli löytää selkeitä rooleja sosiaalisille verkkoyhteisöille osana teollisyrityksen markkinointiviestintää. Lisäksi työssä pyrittiin selvittämään kuinka teollisyrityksen erityispiirteet vaikuttavat sosiaalisissa verkkoyhteisöissä tehtyyn markkinointiviestintään ja kuinka sosiaalisissa verkkoyhteisöissä tehtyjä toimia voidaan mitata. Teoriaosassa käytiin läpi aiheeseen liittyviä käsitteitä sosiaalisten verkkoyhteisöjen, markkinointiviestinnän, teollisen markkinoinnin erityispiirteiden ja mittaamisen osalta. Käytännön osassa teoriaosan tietoja käytiin läpi esimerkkiyrityksen kautta. Tutkimusaineisto kerättiin teoriaosassa kirjallisuuskatsauksena ja käytännön osuudessa tarkastelemalla lisäksi sosiaalista verkkoyhteisösivustoa. Tutkimustuloksista nähdään mihin markkinointiviestintämixin tehtäviin sosiaaliset verkkoyhteisöt sopivat teollisyrityksissä. Analysoidessa tehtäviä tutkimus osoittaa missä tehtävissä sosiaalisten verkkoyhteisöjen käytöllä voidaan tukeaperinteisiä kanavia ja missä ne voivat korvata perinteiset kanavat. Tämän lisäksi esitellään kuinka sosiaalisissa verkkoyhteisöissä tehtyjä toimia voidaan mitata ja kuinka mittaustulokset auttavat teollisyrityksiä sosiaalisien verkkoyhteisöjen roolin määrittämisessä osaksi markkinointiviestintämixiä. Esimerkkiyrityksen ja esiteltyjen teorioiden kautta muut teollisyritykset voivat saada itselleen suuntaviivoja siitä, kuinka sosiaalisissa verkkoyhteisöissä tulisi toimia.

Scheduling of guarded command based models

Formal methods provide a means of reasoning about computer programs in order to prove correctness criteria. One subtype of formal methods is based on the weakest precondition predicate transformer semantics and uses guarded commands as the basic modelling construct. Examples of such formalisms are Action Systems and Event-B. Guarded commands can intuitively be understood as actions that may be triggered when an associated guard condition holds. Guarded commands whose guards hold are nondeterministically chosen for execution, but no further control flow is present by default. Such a modelling approach is convenient for proving correctness, and the Refinement Calculus allows for a stepwise development method. It also has a parallel interpretation facilitating development of concurrent software, and it is suitable for describing event-driven scenarios. However, for many application areas, the execution paradigm traditionally used comprises more explicit control flow, which constitutes an obstacle for using the above mentioned formal methods. In this thesis, we study how guarded command based modelling approaches can be conveniently and efficiently scheduled in different scenarios. We first focus on the modelling of trust for transactions in a social networking setting. Due to the event-based nature of the scenario, the use of guarded commands turns out to be relatively straightforward. We continue by studying modelling of concurrent software, with particular focus on compute-intensive scenarios. We go from theoretical considerations to the feasibility of implementation by evaluating the performance and scalability of executing a case study model in parallel using automatic scheduling performed by a dedicated scheduler. Finally, we propose a more explicit and non-centralised approach in which the flow of each task is controlled by a schedule of its own. The schedules are expressed in a dedicated scheduling language, and patterns assist the developer in proving correctness of the scheduled model with respect to the original one.