How's hyve?

By Michiel Rovers on 2 March 2012

Last year many friends turned over from the Dutch social network website Hyves to Facebook. A major reason was the acquisition of Hyves by publisher TMG (Telegraaf Media Group). With my friends a large number of Hyvers also removed their profile. In January last year I also switched from Hyves to Facebook. Since that day I've lost sight of what is happening on this social network. Until yesterday. Yesterday Marc de Vries, CEO of Hyves visited our school for a guest-lecture. One of his comments was a warning: the fact that your friends removed their profile doesn’t mean that Hyves isn’t doing well. On the contrary, Hyves is alive and kicking. In this blog a short summary of the developments.

tagged with: hyves, social media

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The Crossmedialab social media album Top 50 2012

By Michiel Rovers on 9 January 2012

I love charts and yearlists. This passion started in my childhood. As a child I made lists of almost everything: how long it took to brush my teeth and put on my pajamas (with a all time record of 10 seconds), lists of the time the planes flew over our house to Maastricht Airport, and also of all the licenseplates of the cars in our neighbourhood. When I think about it, I’m surprised that my parents never thought I was autistic.

tagged with: chart, social media, music, interaction

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(my) Life is a festival

By Michiel Rovers on 20 November 2011

Sometimes all pieces of the puzzle come together. Last week I got this feeling at Festivak, a congress for festival organizations in RAI Amsterdam. In one afternoon my past, present and future festival experience passed before me eyes. Here is a short summary of my festival life in one afternoon.

tagged with: crowdsourcing, festivals, participation

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Polls: the opinion of the people or statements from the media?

By Michiel Rovers on 26 September 2011

The third week of September is traditionally an exciting week for Dutch politicians. It’s the official start of the political season. It all starts with the speech of Queen Beatrix on ‘prinsjesdag’. The content is written entirely by the government, and contains the political program for 2011-2012. After the ceremonial happening of the balcony scene (where the entire royal family waves to the people), it’s the Secretary of Finance’s turn to present the suitcase with the national budget. The real fireworks start on Wednesday as the government defends the choices for cuts or taxes.

tagged with: polls, panels, politics, participation

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Social use of social media : the small benefits can be the biggest

By Michiel Rovers on 15 May 2011

There’s a lot of talk about the big opportunities and benefits of using social media. Examples of these benefits are customer engagement, direct customer communications, the speed of feedback/results, learning customer preferences, low cost, brand building, credibility of the ‘crowd’ or reach. You can hear or read al lot about the benefits of social media for marketing purposes, customer service, personal use, for relaxation and public services. The discipline you hear less about the benefits of social media is social welfare. Therefore, E-society organized Next: a congress about the benefits of ICT for professionals in social welfare. This congress contained a combination of presentations and workshops of research and good practices during the last ten years. I would like to present some good examples how social media can make a difference in a community.

tagged with: social media, communities, participation

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How to analyze political tweets

By Michiel Rovers on 11 April 2011

The politics are totally into social media. Nothing new about that. That politicians are trying to close the gap between politics and the people by using social media, is also nothing new. But is this really the reason why they are using social media, or are they only saying this. What kind of messages is sent by politicians? How do people react to these messages? To what extent do politicians respond to the reactions of citizens? In the past two years Chris Aalberts and Maurits Kreijveld have done research to find answers to these questions. These answers are described in their book ‘veel gekwetter, weinig wol’. To my humble opinion, the most interesting contribution from this research is the number of new questions that come out of their results. I would like to describe some answers from Aalberts and Kreijveld given to the three questions above. With these answers I’d like to ask some new questions and introduce you to the new database that gives opportunities to answer these new questions. 

tagged with: database, politics, social media

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Who gets my vote?

By Michiel Rovers on 27 February 2011

Coming up: the provincial elections. On March 2, I again have to decide who gets my vote and especially why. Right now I am a true undecided voter. For that reason I am looking for the politician and the party that is able to convince me. So for the last few weeks I’ve been looking on Twitter and television to find the most reliable politician and party.

tagged with: elections, politicians, twitter, social media

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NOS and the public library: the new school of journalism?

By Michiel Rovers on 16 January 2011

A few months ago I talked about the new developments in libraries. The age of just lending books is over. Libraries are looking for new forms of service in addition to the existing services. Possible new services are an art library, a place to meet for several target groups or a central information center. The library is getting some help from an unexpected corner. The NOS (Dutch broadcast association) has announced to cooperate with the public libraries. The newsarchive of the NOS will be merged with background information from the libraries.

tagged with: social media, library, nos, young people

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What happened to the political Tweeps?

By Michiel Rovers on 12 November 2010

A few months ago I wrote about the use of Twitter by politicians. It was election time. Politicians all wanted to influence the public opinion by posting tweets, and they did. Tweets and retweets followed each other rapidly. During some debates on national television, the debate itself was the subject with the largest number of followers on Twitter worldwide. Meanwhile, the battle for the votes was fought and a government has been formed. Our new prime minister Rutte was one of few politicians who didn’t use Twitter during election time. Will he be using Twitter? And how active are the other politicians at the moment?

tagged with: policy, twitter, politicians, social media

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Library 2.0

By Michiel Rovers on 10 October 2010

When I was younger than I am today I went to the library many times. The main reason I came to the library was to search for summaries of the books we had to read for our exam. But it was also a place where it was nice and quiet, where you could smell the books and where you could escape the turbulent life of school. Strange enough these visits stopped after I was graduated. All the literature I needed could be found in the library at my university, and therefore it wasn’t necessary to go to the public library anymore.

tagged with: digital information, library, young people

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