An empirical study on uncertainty identification in social media context

Uncertainty text detection is important to many social-media-based applications since more and more users utilize social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, etc.) as information source to produce or derive interpretations based on them. However, existing uncertainty cues are ineffective in social media context because of its specific characteristics. In this paper, we propose a variant of annotation scheme for uncertainty identification and construct the first uncertainty corpus based on tweets. We then conduct experiments on the generated tweets corpus to study the effectiveness of different types of features for uncertainty text identification. © 2013 Association for Computational Linguistics.

Connecting social media to e-commerce:cold-start product recommendation using microblogging information

In recent years, the boundaries between e-commerce and social networking have become increasingly blurred. Many e-commerce websites support the mechanism of social login where users can sign on the websites using their social network identities such as their Facebook or Twitter accounts. Users can also post their newly purchased products on microblogs with links to the e-commerce product web pages. In this paper, we propose a novel solution for cross-site cold-start product recommendation, which aims to recommend products from e-commerce websites to users at social networking sites in 'cold-start' situations, a problem which has rarely been explored before. A major challenge is how to leverage knowledge extracted from social networking sites for cross-site cold-start product recommendation. We propose to use the linked users across social networking sites and e-commerce websites (users who have social networking accounts and have made purchases on e-commerce websites) as a bridge to map users' social networking features to another feature representation for product recommendation. In specific, we propose learning both users' and products' feature representations (called user embeddings and product embeddings, respectively) from data collected from e-commerce websites using recurrent neural networks and then apply a modified gradient boosting trees method to transform users' social networking features into user embeddings. We then develop a feature-based matrix factorization approach which can leverage the learnt user embeddings for cold-start product recommendation. Experimental results on a large dataset constructed from the largest Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo and the largest Chinese B2C e-commerce website JingDong have shown the effectiveness of our proposed framework.

"Lájkolom őket, de ennék is náluk?" – Aktivitásra buzdító kis- és középvállalati közösségimédia-tevékenységek fogyasztói fogadtatása magyarországi vendéglátóhelyek példáján keresztül ("I like them, but would I eat at their place?" – Encouraging social media activities of small and medium-sized enterprises and their consumerreactions – the case of Hungarian catering establishments)

A vendéglátóipari egységek kommunikációjában fontos szerepe van a közösségi médiában való jelenlétnek. Hazánkban a leggyakrabban használt felület a Facebook, amely sok ilyen vállalkozás esetében kiemelt fontosságú, vagy akár az egyetlen reálisan elérhető marketingkommunikációs felület. Kutatásunkban azt vizsgáljuk, hogy a felhasználók hogyan érzékelik a feléjük továbbított üzleti célú információkat a közösségi felületen, illetve hogy a fogyasztókra milyen mértékű aktivitás jellemző kedvenc vendéglátóipari egységük oldalán. Ennek céljából szubjektív fogyasztói narratívákat (n=151) elemzünk a kvalitatív tartalomelemzés módszertanával. A válaszadókat arra kértük, hogy írjanak kedvenc vendéglátóhelyükkel való kapcsolatukról az online térben. A "belájkolt" vendéglátóipari egységek felületeinek fogyasztók által észlelt aktivitása segítheti a vállalkozásokat abban, hogy alaptevékenységük elemeinek kommunikálásával, vagy akár ettől teljesen eltérő közösségi stratégiát használva pozicionálják márkájukat. A márkák tudatos tartalommenedzselése hozzájárulhat továbbá a felhasználók virtuális térben való hatékonyabb eléréséhez és bevonásához. ____ Presence in social media is an important element in the communication of catering establishments. The most frequently used platform in Hungary – that is extraordinarily important, or even the only reasonably accessible marketing communications platform for many catering companies – is Facebook. In our research, we analyse how users perceive the business-purposed information forwarded to them on the social media platform, and how intensive are the consumers’ activities on their most preferred catering establishment's site. For this purpose we analyse subjective consumer narratives (N=151) with the methodology of qualitative content analysis. We asked the respondents to write about the relationship with their most preferred catering establishment in the online sphere. Perceived activity of the "liked" catering establishment's platform could help enterprises to position themselves by communicating their core activities, or by using a totally different social strategy. Moreover, conscious content management of brands could contribute to reach and to engage users in the virtual sphere more efficiently.

Sports sponsorship as a channel for brand engagement on social media

The purpose of this Mater’s Thesis was to examine how sports sponsorship can be used as a channel for brand engagement on social media. All these three concepts have been researched previously, however, up until now they have been studied separately. Therefore, the aim was also to investigate the interrelations between these three concepts, as there is a lack of academic base on the matter. The theory of the research was based on existing academic researches of social media, brand engagement and sports sponsorship. The empirical part of the research was conducted by utilizing quantitative research method. An online questionnaire was published on Facebook pages of two Liiga ice hockey teams. In the end the total sample consisted of 322 viable respondents. The collected data was analyzed by using statistical analysis software, SPSS. The findings of the empirical research reveal that information, enjoyment, personal identity, social interaction and compensation motivate consumers to engage with brands on social media. However, the behavior of consumers is more passive than active brand engagement. Personal identity and compensation serve as motivational reasons for brand engagement on both active and passive level, while the rest are only passive brand engagement. Besides motivation there are other variables that affect consumers. Support for the team reflects to brand engagement, which is passive brand engagement. The visibility of the brand during the event is linked to both active and passive brand engagement. Prior information of sports team and event and frequency of attendance can be linked only to active brand engagement. On the other hand, congruence between the team and brand reflects only to passive brand engagement.

The space for social media in structured online learning

In this paper, we explore the benefits of using social media in an online educational setting, with a particular focus on the use of Facebook and Twitter by participants in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) developed to enable educators to learn about the Carpe Diem learning design process. We define social media as digital social tools and environments located outside of the provision of a formal university-provided Learning Management System. We use data collected via interviews and surveys with the MOOC participants as well as social media postings made by the participants throughout the MOOC to offer insights into how participants’ usage and perception of social media in their online learning experiences differed and why. We identified that, although some participants benefitted from social media by crediting it, for example, with networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities, others objected or refused to engage with social media, perceiving it as a waste of their time. We make recommendations for the usage of social media for educational purposes within MOOCs and formal digital learning environments.

Sponsoring, brand value and social media

The increasing involvement of individuals in social media over the past decade has enabled firms to pursue new avenues in communication and sponsoring activities. Besides general research on either social media or sponsoring, questions regarding the consequences of a joint activity (sponsoring activities in social media) remain unexplored. Hence, the present study analyses whether the perceived image of the brand and the celebrity endorser credibility of a top sports team influence the perceived brand value of the sponsoring firm in a social media setting. Moreover, these effects are compared between existing customers and non-customers of the sponsoring firm. Interestingly, perceived celebrity endorser credibility plays no role in forming brand value perceptions in the case of the existing customers. Implications for marketing theory and practice are derived.

Proposta de modelo de avaliação de desempenho das marcas no facebook

Relatório de estágio apresentado à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Publicidade e Marketing.

Social Media Integration in Video Games: A Social Overlay for Desktop Games

Simpósio de Informática (INForum 2015), Covilhã, Portugal. Notes: Best paper award nominee.

How do companies use social media?

NSBE-UNL

Social-media monitoring for cold-start recommendations

Generating personalized movie recommendations to users is a problem that most commonly relies on user-movie ratings. These ratings are generally used either to understand the user preferences or to recommend movies that users with similar rating patterns have rated highly. However, movie recommenders are often subject to the Cold-Start problem: new movies have not been rated by anyone, so, they will not be recommended to anyone; likewise, the preferences of new users who have not rated any movie cannot be learned. In parallel, Social-Media platforms, such as Twitter, collect great amounts of user feedback on movies, as these are very popular nowadays. This thesis proposes to explore feedback shared on Twitter to predict the popularity of new movies and show how it can be used to tackle the Cold-Start problem. It also proposes, at a finer grain, to explore the reputation of directors and actors on IMDb to tackle the Cold-Start problem. To assess these aspects, a Reputation-enhanced Recommendation Algorithm is implemented and evaluated on a crawled IMDb dataset with previous user ratings of old movies,together with Twitter data crawled from January 2014 to March 2014, to recommend 60 movies affected by the Cold-Start problem. Twitter revealed to be a strong reputation predictor, and the Reputation-enhanced Recommendation Algorithm improved over several baseline methods. Additionally, the algorithm also proved to be useful when recommending movies in an extreme Cold-Start scenario, where both new movies and users are affected by the Cold-Start problem.

Social media: The new tool in firms’ marketing strategies

In this work project we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of social media as a marketing tool. Four international cases were analyzed to provide anecdotal evidence of how social and viral marketing have been used by four firms in very different industries. We reviewed empirical evidence on the topic to discuss the main components of viral marketing. We concluded that positive (electronic) word of mouth, short response time and seeding through high network value customers are the main drivers of the success of a viral marketing campaign. We also conducted a study of the Portuguese telecommunications industry, in particular, the mobile segment. We found that the three main players operating in this market have been using social media successfully as a marketing tool in a strategic approach to the 14-25 years old segment.

Management consulting labs-Galp social media

Social Media @ Galp Project had a very specific purpose – analyze the feasibility for Galp to enter in new Social Media platforms and, if appropriate, develop a short-term strategy for the entrance in which some guidelines are valid for the medium-long-term. As expected, the majority of the project was focused on the second part, which consists in an analysis of some aspects concerning the organization as well as in the relationship with customers and public in general

Management consulting lab- Galp social media

This study consists of the reflection on a consultancy project developed by four students and one project manager from NOVA SBE. In attempting to assist Galp Energia structure the operationalization of an entry into Social Media, we were confronted with first-time challenges in real-life highly demanding workplace situations. The following considerations attempt to defuse the problem-solving mindset of the practical experience from the methodological development and learning experience extracted from the consulting line of work

Management consulting labs- Galp social media

The purpose of this project was to study a possible presence of Galp at Social Media. The importance of this study appears as a consequence of the company’s need to adapt to a new mean of communication that is changing our society and the companies way of doing business. In the consulting labs, the analysis was done taking into account the best practices for business at Social Media and the singularities of the company. The output of this study was a collection of specific guidelines concerning several fields to develop a strategic presence at Social Media.