personal branding, Facebook, Musician Stars, SNS (social network service), online

With the popularity of the Internet and the growing trend of Web2.0, interaction and knowledge exchanges among the Internet users become active. Facebook, currently the world's most successful social networking website of Web2.0, functions as a social entertainer and further develops as a marketing business platform. In particular, many enterprises and organizations focus on operating the function of Fan Page for the purpose of marketing strategy. The research will be conducted from the users' viewpoints and the examples of consumption on Facebook and entertaining Fan Pages will be provided to investigate the specialties and functions of the website, causing the users to organize and participate in the Fan Pages, and the behaviorial motives and the gratification obtained from the process. Substantial and virtual random samplings are utilized in conducting the questionnaire survey. The result shows the obvious difference in the motives of the Fan Page participants based on various levels of education. It also verifies the critical influence of media characteristics on the participation of Fan Page. And, it helps us realize that users with different motives obtain different satisfactions through the participation of Fan Page. In the end, the research investigation can be considered as a basis of enterprise marketing strategies theoretically and practically.

The use of Facebook is increasing rapidly and its pedagogical uses are endless. University students are part of a new generation, working with ease and confidence in this social environment. This article explores the use of Facebook as an additional communication tool in an undergraduate taxation module presented at the University of Pretoria and evaluates students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of such a tool. A Facebook group was created to enhance interaction between students and lecturers and students and their peers. Participation was voluntary, and the students completed a survey at the end of the semester to evaluate their experience in the group. The results of the study show that, although the use of a Facebook group as a communication tool cannot replace the formal learning management system of the university, respondents’ perception of the use of the tool was that Facebook could be used as an additional academic communication tool in all of their subjects. It is the lecturers’ responsibility to learn how to use this tool and incorporate it effectively into their teaching strategies. Copyright 2012, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Hill, T 2012, Facebook as a tool for communication with under graduate taxation students, MCom dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-03092012-111246 / > F12/4/166/gm / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Taxation / MCom / Unrestricted

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The rapid developments Social Network Service (SNS) have offered opportunities to re-visit many seminal theoretical assumptions of technology usage within socio-technical environment. Online social network is a rapidly growing field that imposes new questions to the existing IS research paradigm. It is argued that information systems research must necessarily evolve in response to the emerging trends (Lyytinen and King, 2004). Specifically, one stream of research has been heavily lacking is SNS usage prediction (Hargittai, 2007). In SNS, the form of social network is realized by computing networks where the individual assumes an identity of an “avatar”. People are merging their activities of work and living thus blurring the borders among their social contexts (Beck and Wade, 2006). Such new trends have become more sophisticated due to the increasingly robust data network capacity and pervasive availability of communication technology. At present, research in SNS is still in its early stage; hence the need to develop knowledge of virtual world dynamics has become impending. SNS essentially provides various service channels to facilitate social network interactions. These channels are highly correlated with their respective service contexts, among which differences are obvious and important. Cultural factors have been crucial for context oriented studies in both IS and sociology fields. For instance, the global nature of the Internet “raises questions about the robustness of trust effects across cultures” (Jarvenpaa et al., 1999). In SNS, not only trust but also privacy has become a tremendous caveat for service providers. Investigating the combination effects of privacy and trust in a cross-cultural study may lead to important theoretical discoveries and meaningful managerial implications. This study contributes to knowledge by empirically testing established theoretical models of IS acceptance, trust, social and cultural research. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used in order to present a comprehensive analysis of SNS perception and use in different cultural settings. Particularly, the study finds critical differences exist within the process of trust formulation between American and Chinese SNS users.

The diploma thesis deals with the problem of social networking in banking sector of the Czech Republic. The goal of the thesis is to define a set of best practices for successful activity of banks on social networks, based on own research of current activity of selected Czech banks in social networks environment. The thesis is divided into four main chapters. The first chapter summarizes the findings of previous theses, which dealt with similar topic. The second chapter deals with the problem of social networking theoretically, describes the actual most important social networks in the world, suggests their division according to typical attributes and describes the most important ways of social networking usage for business. The third chapter contains own research of social networks usage by Czech banks, definition of criteria for evaluation of the research and the evaluation itself. The final chapter contains the set of best practices based on the research, which can be used for successful activity of banks in social networks environment. Keywords

Previous research has been conducted to try to explain the relationship between stress and focus for the use of different platforms for work communication. On the other hand, during a pandemic there is a lot that separates everyday life from how it was before the pandemic began and working from home was not as obvious as it is today. Applications whose number of daily users has skyrocketed can also account for a perceived stress for a user - how does this affect individuals’ ability to focus on the application? A survey was created and published for two weeks using previous research that examined the links be- tween stress and focus on social media. The study was conducted by collecting data from various forums related to relevant applications, where it is discovered that stress has a weak but significant effect on distractions outside applications and on distractions within applications. The results show that a perceived distraction outside the application can for 22% be explained by stress and within the application can for 16.6% be explained by stress. Results and the similarities between social media and platforms for work commu- nication are compared and discussed based on the presented theory and related research. / Tidigare forskning har utförts för att försöka förklara sambandet mellan stress och fokus för användandet av olika plattformar för arbetskommunikation. Däremot är det under en pandemi mycket som skiljer vardagen åt från hur det var innan pandemin började och hemmaarbete inte var en sådan självklarhet som det är i dagens läge. Applikationer som vars antal dagliga användare skjutit i höjden kan också stå för en upplevd stress för en användare- hur påverkar detta en individs förmåga att fokusera på applikationen? En enkät utformas och publicerades under två veckor med hjälp av tidigare forskning som undersökt kopplingen mellan stress och fokus för sociala medier. Undersökningen bedrivs genom att data samlas in från varierande forum tillhörande olika relevanta applikationer, där det kommer fram att stress har en svag, men signifikant påverkan på distraktioner utanför applikationen och på distraktioner inom applikationen. Resultaten visar att en upplevd distraktion utanför applikationen kan 22% förklaras av stress och inom applikationen kan 16.6% förklaras av stress. Resultaten och likheterna mellan sociala medier och plattformar för arbetskommunikation jämförs och diskuteras utifrån den presenterade teorin och relaterad forskning.

我們從自然語言領域中借用Thesaurus模型作為字彙關聯的基礎，陸續加入Folksonomy概念、Social Network Service指標的蒐集以及domain-specific ontology來建構Tag-Thesaurus模型，用來解決使用一般tagging system資源彙整能力不足的問題。首先我們對將要實驗的領域選取初始字彙，並利用這些字彙建構Tag-Thesaurus模型。接著將預先準備的這些字彙釋放到社會網路服務平台的tagging system中，透過社會網路服務平台中的tagging system來蒐集使用者對於資源的平面分類資訊，利用這些資訊來對Tag-Thesaurus模型持續地擴充。透過這樣的Tag-Thesaurus模型，我們將可以獲得較佳的資源彙整。domain-specific ontology的加入將可以強化由上而下的資源彙整。而Social Network Service當中的其他資訊，如FOAF[16]或是個人的偏好等，將可以提昇個人化資源彙整的能力。這樣的結合方式不僅是ontology應用的示範，我們更希望透過這樣的混合式模型，使得Web 2.0這樣子廣泛蒐集眾人智慧的概念能夠成為跨入語意網的橋樑。 / We aggregate various resources through the Tag-Thesaurus Model. There are three parts in Tag-Thesaurus model, the Folksonomy formal model, indices collection on Social Network Service, and lightweight domain-specific ontology. The Folksnomy model reconstruct relationships between tags, and we can aggregate resources by tags. The indices collection on Social Network Service help us to decide which resource are more important. Finally, the lightweight domain-specific ontology provide the standard interface to describe the relationships between tags.