OpenSocial Gadget Contest

Adding new features to Profiles and/or VIVO

Twitter Widget

Proposal Status: 

I think it'd be useful to add a widget for faculty and staff to share Twitter feeds through Profiles, especially folks who maintain and manage social media across the University.  Perhaps even a way to pull the information at UCSF centrally, a sort of Twitter hub using Profiles as the primary source of data.  

 

I know this functionality already exists to some extent on various sites, but similar to the "co-authors" and "same department" tabs that come up on the right, this could be a way of further integrating concordant research and researchers, perhaps even agregating similar research topics.  For instance, if a researcher chose a certain amount of hashtags to follow, this widget could pull together similar voices at UCSF who are working on the same topic.  

 

It has a clear external value for those trying to navigate the (daunting) institution from Profiles, but also of value to the UCSF faculty or staff as a method of networking.

Comments

This sounds like a great idea, and like it should be discussed with Anirvan and Katja, who won a recent IT Open Proposal with something similar: http://open-proposals.ucsf.edu/itcontest/proposal/139

Thanks, Brian! Yes, especially if there's already some traction around a similar initiative. I think it'd be really useful to use Profiles as a sort of zeitgeist mechanism for social media as a research tool.

We're on the same page! UCSF just developed a simple Twitter gadget — here's an example of it in use. We're in the process of open sourcing the gadget so other universities can use it.

Additionally, CTSI at UCSF has been tracking lists of Twitter accounts of people at UCSF and groups at UCSF. These Twitter lists (perhaps repackaged/filtered) are sort of like what you're asking for, right? How would you want these to be repackaged, so they're most useful for you?

I think something more streamlined of the visible tweets page would be pretty interesting.  Great to hear we're on the same page!  I think the additions I'm suggestion would be fairly simple and straight forward, and a great way to push forward an already exisiting initiative!  

Selected comments from Reviewer(s):

Reviewer 1: "Don't people who share the same hashtag eventually know each other through the twitter streams?  More importantly, I doubt that more than 20% of people in profiles are active twitter users; I could see how this could be valuable in a setting with higher twitter penetration."
Reviewer 2: "depends on how cleanly it's done.  But if it's done already, may not be relevant"

 

On behalf of Clinical and Translational Science Institute at UCSF, thank you for participating in this contest.

Commenting is closed.