Network Evaluation

From the data collected on PTT and Facebook site, this study completely collected the data of HTC discussing day by day during five months, including time, article topic, content, user’s name and so on to present the context objectively rather than have the subjective judgment. This study only focused on the period of on sale of the product HTC- for the data collection. Then do data filtering for comprehending the information diffusion more clearly.

To target the core of information diffusion, this study averages every function role’s score. Thus, the users’ relationships can be linked together one by one. The questionnaire is satisfied with expert validity and the data collected is tremendous recorded, so this study is considerable objective for the social network analysis.

The network of PTT and Facebook site Four ICT experts were invited to score the function role for PTT and Facebook site users and the evaluation can be conducted by 5 steps, and it is as follows:

Step 1: Identify role function of users’ on the two sites

(1)Relationships of the users on PTT site

The functions of the PTT sites offered are different, Figure 3-2 showed the context of an article’s discussion, four function roles may exist including comment, arrow, criticize and repost, when posting and article, and in pace with reposting the article, comment, arrow and criticize appear possibly.

Figure 3-2 Relationship of the users on PTT site

(2)Function roles on PTT site:

Post: the initial point of the article, they post the articles to share the information, talk about the product functions and the telecommunication programs, and compare the products.

Comment: the respondents of the posting articles, their responses approve the article considerably and they may bring about more new information on the topics.

Arrow: the respondents of the posting articles, their responses may not agree with the article, and they talk with others sometimes.

Criticize: the respondents of the posting articles, their responses disagree with the article, and it may be caused by the nonsense or unmeaningful content.

Repost: the respondents of the posting articles, they create the new article by extending the posting article, so the comments, arrows and criticizes are the respondents of the reposts.

(3)Relationships of the users on Facebook site

The functions of the Facebook sites offered are different, Figure 3-3 showed the context of an article’s discussion. Two roles may exist including comment and share when posting or sharing the article, and in pace with commenting the article, some users may like the discussions possibly.

Figure 3-3 Relationship of the users on Facebook site

(4)Function roles on Facebook site:

Post: the initial point of the article, they post the articles to share the information, talk about the product functions and the telecommunication programs, and compare the products.

Comment: the respondents of the posting articles, their responses may approve the article, bring about new information of the topics and disagree with the article. Moreover, they often talk with others for interacting and communicating.

Like: the respondents of the posting articles, their responses represent that they attain the information of the posting article and agree the content of the article.

Share: the respondents of the posting articles, their responses are forwarding the initial posting articles to others.

Step 2: Participative observation and Data Collecting and filtering

At this step, this study collected the detailed data of the sites, including the user name, content of discussions, time and topic. Then, according to wide range of data, this study filtered the useless data, and only focus on the articles related to HTC-XE. This study puts one month as a time unit, and separates 5 units to draw the relationships of networks.

Step 3 : Developing evaluative score of each function role on the sites

Because this study would like to know the virtual relationships on the PTT and Facebook site, the function roles represents the direction and intensity of connection by scoring. This study invited four ICT experts with using experiences for PTT and Facebook site to fill in the questionnaires (refer to appendix) about the degree of information diffusion, taking range one to nine as scoring.

Then we used the questionnaire of experts survey to obtain the degree of information diffusion for each function role objectively.

Table 3-1 showed the role functions and scores of PTT site. The average score indicated “post” is the greatest degree of information diffusion, and

“repost” is the second. The least one is “arrow” by the measurement of the experts.

Table 3-1 Function Roles and the scores on the PTT site diffusion. For example, the relationship between the post and comment, “post”

to “comment” scored 7.0 , “comment” to “post” scored 6.0 and so on.

Table 3-2 Relationships between the roles on PTT site

Function roles Direction Score

Table 3-3 showed the functions and scores of the Facebook site, and the average score indicated that share is the greatest degree of information diffusion, and post is the second. The least one is like by the measurement of experts.

Table 3-3 Function roles and the scores on Facebook site

Function comment scored 7.75, comment to post scored 6.00 and so on.

Table 3-4 Relationships between the roles on Facebook site

Function roles Direction Score

Step4: Data coding

At this step, the study put the user name into numeric and English of two sites in order to do the network analysis more easily.

Step 5: Drawing the network diagram and analyzing network

According to scoring the information diffusion measurement, this study drew the relationships and plus scores if users connect to each other, then developed symmetrical matrix for the network analysis. Using different symbols and colors represents the function roles. On PTT site, symbols of post is circle, comment is up triangle, arrow is diamond, criticize is square and repost is box. On Facebook site, symbols of post is circle, comment is up trangle, like is diamond and share is square. Different colors indicated the numeric of degree and Betweenness.

Step6: Evaluating and comparing the information diffusion of the two sites Because the characteristics of PTT and Facebook site differ from each other, this study would like to find the rate of users increasing and amounts of posting article on these sites.

Then, using the indexes of social network analysis, including degree, indegree, outdegree, and betweenness to explore the meaning of the indexes on the sites.

Finally, by analyzing the characteristics of PTT and Facebook site, we aim to explore the velocity differences of the users and articles for the influence of each function role on the sites. Then find the context of network diagram of the PTT and Facebook site during five months to understand the way of

information diffusion on the sites for finding the meanings of corporate marketing strategy.