Friday, September 17, 2010
12:30 PM
CSB 209
Katrina Panovich
MIT
Questions and Answers in Social Networks
Before we had Wikipedia and Google, we had the (paper!) encyclopedia
and our friends to ask. While we've largely abandoned paper
encyclopedias, we still ask our friends and peers for information. One
interesting place that this happens is on social networks - people
communicate a lot, and some of that communication is question asking
and answering. I'm particularly fascinated by questions that are asked
in status messages or tweets and I'll present some of my work looking
at how people use those forums for asking and answering questions.
I'll also bring up some points that can inform design of search
systems to better utilize this already existent behavior.