Brian Keegan presented Virtual World Observatory research at the ACM Web Science and AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) this summer. Video lectures of these presentations and the slide decks are now available: Web Science: http://videolectures.net/acmwebsci2011_keegan_intersection/ ICWSM:... read more »
A paper authored by members of the Virtual Worlds Observatory team including Brian Keegan, Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, Dmitri Williams, Jaideep Srivastava, and Noshir Contractor won a best paper at the 2011 ACM Web Science conference. The paper is titled “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi Virtuali? Promise and Peril at the Intersection... read more »
June 3rd, Dr. Yun Huang presented the paper “Distance Matters: Exploring Proximity and Homophily in a Virtual World” co-authored with Cuihua Shen and Noshir Contractor in the First International Conference of Theory and Applications of Social Networks at Austin, Texas. This study analyzes the impacts of distance, time... read more »
Recent research by SONIC undergraduate Nick Merrill and graduate student Brooke Foucault demonstrates that social status within a Second Life group is positively correlated with the donation of in-game resources to one’s group. In Second Life, in-game resources can be traded for real-world money, so this finding indicates... read more »
The Virtual World Observatory‘s gold farming team has had their paper “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi Virtuali? Promise and Peril at the Intersection of Computational Social Science and Online Clandestine Organizations” accepted for full paper presentation at WebSci 2011 in Koblenz, Germany in June. read more »
Make sure to pick up the Spring issue of the ACM XRDS magazine featuring an article “What can gold farmers teach us about criminal networks?” written by members of the VWO team! http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1925043 read more »
