A new technology to promote communication on SNS

　 

   People start using social networking sites to communicate with more people and reinforce the ties with their friends.

   However, even though they start using, some kinds of social networking sites are difficult to use efficiently. In my experience, when I started using Facebook and Twitter, one of my friends taught me how to use them.

   In addition, when you use them as a tool to communicate with people who never met, you might be worried what topics you should talk and know about them. Among them, they feel troublesome thinking about these things and quite using them eventually.

　　　In fact, the average number of friends in Japan is 53 people (the average number of friends in the world is 80 people) in 2012. And the ratio of people whose friends on Facebook is under 10 is 47.4％. It means that many people don’t use a lot and the number of people who are related on Facebook is less than in the real world. In short, many Japanese people don’t use social networking sites effectively.

   I think one of the reasons is the Japanese are not good at communicating, because they are shy in front of unknown people. Many people are worried about how to continue a conversation.

   To improve such a situation, NEC, one of the Japanese electrical equipment manufactures, invented a new technology to active conversation on social networking sites. The technology can analyze people’s interests and friendship networks from social networking sites and browsing histories on Internet. From them, the technology can suggest people a topic. According to an article (in Japanese), the company did operation test in Sendai, one of the disaster-stricken area of the Tohoku earthquake in 2011. 
　　　The result was the amount of communication increased 2.1 times compared with before. In addition, the amount of friend’s registration among people who used the technology increased 3.1 times. That is why the company expects the technology will be helpful to promote people’s public participation.

   The technology might look to force people to communication, however I think it is very useful especially in the disaster-stricken area, because a lot of people still feel isolation. I hope the technology will be practicalized soon.