Interactions - March/April 2011

(APIs) are considered—it is increasingly challenging to comprehensively characterize what might be visible to whom, not to mention where, when, or for how long.

Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, has been under fire for its unanticipated and unwanted privacy implications as part of its ever-evolving terms of service, especially with respect to the availability of personal data [ 7]. Zuckerberg’s aforementioned willingness to make mistakes notwithstanding, developing effective interfaces for helping users understand and navigate the bewildering privacy settings for social media services is an important area to which HCI may be able to provide useful guidelines.

Another dimension of Zuckerberg’s comment is the explicit acknowledgment of the implicit cost-benefit analysis that many users make when facing changes to terms of use with popular social media services. While 30,000-plus people pledged to delete their Facebook accounts on May 31, 2010 (“Quit Facebook Day”) in protest over the most recent privacy changes, they represent less than 0.01 percent of the Facebook user population. Unfortunately, we will never know how many actually deleted their accounts or how many of them later rejoined the site. We do know that the number of unique visitors to Facebook site increased during the following month [ 8].

All of this is not intended to suggest that privacy is not or should not be an important consideration in HCI and social media. However, it does suggest that we may want to expand our consideration of relevant factors, and to incorporate insights from other fields that have not traditionally played a key role in HCI, for example, behavioral economics.

Health 2.0

The best description I’ve seen of Health 2.0 was in a slide deck entitled “Patient 2.0” by Regina Holliday, in which she defined e-patients as “engaged, empowered, equipped, and expert” [ 9]. The Health 2.0 movement is broader than social media, as it involves many stakeholders, such as government and insurance industry bureaucracies, who have yet to embrace social media (to put it charitably).

But the potential for truly participatory medicine—with platforms promoting interactions among e-patients and healthcare providers—represents one of the most exciting application areas of social media. It’s perhaps best exemplified by PatientsLikeMe.com, which allows people suffering from an array of diseases to share information about their symptoms, treatments, and outcomes with other similarly afflicted patients.

media in new ways. Ideally, the articles themselves will prove to be engaging social objects, worthy of comment and critique, so that this forum will exemplify social media in both form and content.

I welcome your input about topics to explore and/or people to explore them, as well as feedback on the ways in which we might better approach these explorations.

March + April 2011

EndnotEs:

[ 1] Norman, D. Looking back, looking forward. interactions 17, 6 (2010).

[ 2] Kim, A.J. Putting the fun in functional. Presentation; http://www.slideshare.net/amyjokim/ putting-the-fun-in-functiona/ [ 3] Kim, A. J. Gamification Workshop 2010. Presentation; http://www.slideshare.net/amyjokim/ gamification-workshop-2010/ [ 4] Engestrom, J. Why some social network services work and others don’t – Or, the case for object-centered sociality. April 13, 2005; http://www. zengestrom.com/blog/2005/04/why-some-social- network-services-work-and-others-dont-or-the-case-for-object-centered-sociality.html/ [ 5] Knorr-Cetina, K. Sociality with objects: Social relations in postsocial knowledge societies, Theory, Culture and Society 14, 4 (1997), 1-30.

[ 6] Evans, J. I have seen the future, and it looks
a lot like bump (without the bump). TechCrunch.
Nov. 20, 2010; http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/20/
future-bump/
[ 7] McKeon, M. The Evolution of Privacy on
Facebook; http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-
privacy/. Hotz, A. Privacy: Six years of controversy
[infographic]. Mashable. August 25, 2010; http://
mashable.com/2010/08/25/facebook-privacy-
infographic/
Gates, G. Facebook privacy: A bewildering tangle
of options. New York Times; May 12, 2010; http://
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/
facebook-privacy.html/
[ 8] Siegler, M.G. Remember when we were all
supposed to quit Facebook? TechCrunch. July
14, 2010; http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/14/quit-
facebook-someday/
[ 9] Holliday, R. Patient 2.0. June 11, 2010; http://regi-
naholliday.blogspot.com/2010/06/patient-20.html/

About thE Author

Joe McCarthy is a lecturer at the
University of Washington,
Tacoma‘s Institute of Technology.
His research spans ubiquitous
computing, human-computer
interaction, and computer-sup-
ported cooperative work.

interactions

Moving Forward

These categories are not intended as comprehensive or even clearly demarcated. Some of the most interesting areas incorporate two or more of them, for example, social games that are based on physical locations and activities (e.g., through mobile augmented reality or game consoles like Wii or Xbox 360 + Kinect), or the ways in which the social objects in Health 2.0 often include life-threatening or lifesaving aspects not typically present in other forms of object-centered sociality. And, of course, new categories are sure to emerge as social media continues to evolve.

As this forum unfolds, I hope you find the articles informative and provocative. You may not agree with everything that is written here, but I hope we will at least entice you to think about HCI and social