How to use this Page

Some social networks, like Facebook, LinkedIn, and GooglePlus, have optimization features for shared blog posts. It’s kind of how you’d optimize your blog posts on your website. Below is a list of 3 social network features to be aware of (and take advantage of): 1. The post title. Along with creating a keyword effective and powerful blog post title, you need to keep the characters to 40.

A large variety of complex systems in ecology, climate science, biomedicine, and engineering have been observed to exhibit so-called tipping points, where the dynamical state of the system abruptly changes. Typical examples are the rapid transition in lakes from clear to turbid conditions or the sudden extinction of species after a slightly change of environmental conditions. Data and models suggest that detectable warning signs may precede some, though clearly not all, of these drastic events. This view is also corroborated by recently developed abstract mathematical theory for systems, where processes evolve at different rates and are subject to internal and/or external stochastic perturbations.

One main idea to derive warning signs is to monitor the fluctuations of the dynamical process by calculating the variance of a suitable monitoring variable. When the tipping point is approached via a slowly-drifting parameter, the stabilizing effects of the system slowly diminish and the noisy fluctuations increase via certain well-defined scaling laws.

Based upon these observations, it is natural to ask, whether these scaling laws are also present in human social networks and can allow us to make predictions about future events. This is an exciting open problem, to which at present only highly speculative answers can be given. It is indeed to predict a priori unknown events in a social system. Therefore, as an initial step, we try to reduce the problem to a much simpler problem to understand whether the same mechanisms, which have been observed in the context of natural sciences and engineering, could also be present in sociological domains.

In our work, we provide a very first step towards tackling a substantially simpler question by focusing on a priori known events. We analyse a social media data set with a focus on classical variance and autocorrelation scaling law warning signs. In particular, we consider a few events, which are known to occur on a specific time of the year, e.g., Christmas, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. Then we consider time series of the frequency of Twitter hashtags related to the considered events a few weeks before the actual event, but excluding the event date itself and some time period before it.

Now suppose we do not know that a dramatic spike in the number of Twitter hashtags, such as #xmas or #thanksgiving, will occur on the actual event date. Are there signs of the same stochastic scaling laws observed in other dynamical systems visible some time before the event? The more fundamental question is: Are there similarities to known warning signs from other areas also present in social media data?

We answer this question affirmatively as we find that the a priori known events mentioned above are preceded by variance and autocorrelation growth (see Figure). Nevertheless, we are still very far from actually using social networks to predict the occurrence of many other drastic events. For example, it can also be shown that many spikes in Twitter activity are not predictable through variance and autocorrelation growth. Hence, a lot more research is needed to distinguish different dynamical processes that lead to large outburst of activity on social media.

The findings suggest that further investigations of dynamical processes in social media would be worthwhile. Currently, a main focus in the research on social networks lies on structural questions, such as: Who connects to whom? How many connections do we have on average? Who are the hubs in social media? However, if one takes dynamical processes on the network, as well as the changing dynamics of the network topology, into account, one may obtain a much clearer picture, how social systems compare and relate to classical problems in physics, chemistry, biology and engineering.

The post Special events and the dynamical statistics of Twitter appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Ok. I think every author concerned with reaching out with their readers, networking with other authors and selling more books is either engaged on social media or has at least thought about it. The two (in my opinion) heavy weight entities with regards to social media are Facebook and Twitter. These two networks have their fans.

I have to admit that I used to be a big fan of Facebook as it was easy to migrate from having a personal account to a fan page. I understood how it worked and I could apply what I was doing on an almost daily basis on my Facebook Personal account to my Fan page. On the other hand, this Monster called Twitter, just didn’t make sense. I mean wasn’t the whole concept of Twitter similar to shouting in a market place?

It just didn’t make sense and I avoided it…until sometime last year when I read a book titled How to Get Followers on Twitter: A Simple Guide on How to Optimize Twitter and Hootsuite by Denice Shaw. I started applying some of the things I discovered in this book and my Twitter following has swelled from less than a hundred to more than 500.

Now it has to be said that the amount of your followers does not determine how influential a person is on any social network. I have seen Facebook fan pages with thousands of fans but only a handful currently engaged with the posts on that page. An effective social media network should do at least one of the following:

1. Help you to easily find people interested in your passions and interests.
2. Facilitate easy connection with people who share your passions and interests.
3. Enable a conversation with people that share your passions and interests.

Now with the algorithm changes at Facebook, it has become almost nigh on impossible to do any of the above. Can you think of a painless way to get discovered by people on Facebook who like the books you like? Most authors (and I’m one of them) no longer see the same traction Facebook once provided.

However, Twitter provides the three benefits I highlighted above. Central to the ease of seeing and being seen on the Twitterverse are little things known as hashtags. If you’re on Twitter, you’ve probably seen someone leave a message like this

‘Can’t wait to read the latest #mystery #novel by Harlan Coben.’

The symbol ‘#’ before the words mystery and novel render them as hashtags. Anyone on Twitter who is interested in mystery novels can search for those hashtags, find your tweet and either retweet (that is broadcast your tweet to their followers), favourite (similar to liking a post on Facebook) and/or reply to your post. As an author, I usually use the hashtags below:

#IndieAuthor

#novel

#Mystery

#WritingTip

#Kidlit

#MGLit

#Kidlitchat

I’ve found it humbling and exciting when people who don’t even follow me either retweet, favourite or reply to my tweets simply because I have included a hashtag that relates to something they’re interested in. I have made many new friends and acquaintances this way. I have had the parent of a student at a school where I did a reading reach out to me on Twitter. I’ve had a few New York Times Best-selling authors retweet, favourite and/or like my tweets. This week, I had a lovely lady reach out to me on Twitter and share a picture of her grandson with one of my books. The possibilities for connecting with your fans and other book lovers really is bountiful on Twitter. I’d like to encourage you to join Twitter today and join the conversation. There’s a certain group of people who are speaking your language and will gladly welcome you into their fold as to share with you and have you share with them.

I’ll still keep using Facebook but my main stop when I think of social media is Twitter.

I’d highly recommend Denice Shaw’s book as it contains many useful tips, etiquette, resources to help you understand and use Twitter well. Get it at the link below

How to Get Followers on Twitter: A Simple Guide on How to Optimize Twitter and Hootsuite

Are you still finding joy on Facebook? Or perhaps Twitter still doesn’t make sense to you. Or maybe you use LinkedIn or some other social media network that you’d highly recommend. I really would like to hear your thoughts and comments, so drop a line or two in the comment box below and you can follow me on Twitter @davidchuka

For two years I’ve been Tweeting the hashtag #bedtimepicks to share the picture books I’m reading to my kids that night. For two years some folks have joined in, yet all have dropped out.

Then I realized: YOU HAVEN’T BLOGGED ABOUT THIS FOR TWO YEARS?

What is wrong with me? (Don’t answer that!)

So I now triumphantly propose we get moving with this hashtag! It’s a simple way to share and discover great picture books. (And if you read chapter books or middle grade novels to your kids, of course, those count, too!)

In the evening, tweet something like this:

Then click on the hashtag to see what other parents and caregivers are reading.

VOILA!

TWO YEARS IN THE MAKING!

If you’re in, let me know in the comments. And please blog about it to spread the word.

Now quick, let’s all play catch-up!

I don't know about you, but Twitter intimidates me. Thousands of tweets come from every direction unless you sort them, and if you want to reach a target audience, how do you do it? Other people know much more about Twitter than I do, but as an independent mystery author I am looking for ways to promote my work effectively. Hash tags (#) are a way to assign topics to your messages, and here are some common ones that may be suitable for marketing:

I thought I was bein' a smarty pants by using the word "write" in all my blog titles, but have since discovered through some recent analysis, that dynamic titles have a real draw factor for the reader. So, I thought -- here's an opportunity to put those findings into practice. So, from now on, I'll be coming up with titles that better represent my writing exercises.

So, I think I'm starting to get the hang of Twitter. I've started using #hashtags. They're actually pretty cool and are helpful for searching or even tweet ideas. I'm starting to get a lil twaddicted. *just breath, KC*

Anyway, my daughter was working on an essay about Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and it got me to thinking about famous Shakespearean lines and gave me the idea for my next writing exercise.


What's in a name? That which we call a rose
Shall I compare thee to a summers' day?
[But] The course of true love never did run smooth
Is whispering nothing?
The lady doth protest too much
[And] All that glisters is not gold

It smells to heaven
Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain
The green-eyed monster
This thing of darkness
Swift as a shadow
Make mad the guilty

And thus I clothe my naked villainy
More sinned against than sinning
One that loved not wisely but too well
The most unkindest cut of all
[So] The patient must minister to himself
I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you
There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow

Why then tonight let us assay our plot
The quality of mercy is not strained
In my heart of hearts
Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed
To thine own self be true
So sweet was never so fatal

O, happy dagger!
Chaos is come again
Neither rhyme nor reason
That way madness lies
O, what men do dare!
O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!

Parting is such sweet sorrow
Done to deat