The success of social media sites like Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, and Flickr reflect a change in the way people use the Web. Current estimates are that over one third of all new material being added to the Web is user-generated content from sites like these.

Business leaders and VCs have taken note, and this is probably the most active area for new Internet startups and new ventures from established businesses. There’s a demand for people who understand the phenomenon, the technologies that make it work and the new technologies that will enable the next wave of successful services and sites. Who knows, maybe you can be the next Mark Zuckerberg. (If you do, please remember your alma mater.)

If you are still looking for a course to round out your Spring schedule, you might consider CMSC 491S/691S — ‘Social Web Technologies’. This special topics course will meet MW 7:10-8:25pm and be taught by Dr. Harry Chen, who received his Ph.D. from UMBC in 2004. For format will be seminar-style and project-oriented. It will cover (1) how social web technologies such as blogs, social networking, social bookmarking, photo/video sharing and folksonomies can improve the productivity of people and (2) how to apply the latest Web technologies (e.g., Machine learning, text mining, RDF, PhP, GIS, SOA, Javascript) to create social web applications. More information.

Related posts: • UMBC seminar on Social Web Technologies;  • Social Data on the Web workshop at ISWC 2008;  • UMBC offers class on Anatomy of a Video Game in Spring 2008;  

Posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 11:29 am in categories [UMBC, Social media, Web 2.0, Semantic Web]. Comments feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site. edit