Open Password – Friday, December 10, 2021
#1009
Lecture series on information science – Katrin Scheibe – Franziska Zimmer – Gamification – Streaming services – Nader Fadl – Wolfgang G. Stock – Kaja Fietkiewicz – Stamp cards – Online services – Live streaming – Facebook – YouTube – Instagram – Online gaming – E-sports – YouTube Live – twitch.tv – Corona – Parasocial Relationship – Virtual Gifts – Content Analysis – China – QQ.com – Livestream Features – Chelsea-Adelaide – You.Now.com – Streamer – Participants – Viewers – One-to-Many Communication
Cloud Trends 2022 – Multi Cloud – ML-based Analytics – Green IT – Managed Cloud Security – Peter Schmidt – Syntax – Container Technology – Cloud Native – SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud – Digital Production – Microsoft – Amazon – Public Cloud – Sustainability – Ransomware – Disaster Recovery – Public and academic libraries in dialogue – Research Center Jülich – Düsseldorf City Library – WissKom2022 – Digital strategy – Open Access – Sustainability – User groups – Information and advice – Online video offers – Market development – Corona – AGF video research – Kerstin Niederauer- Kopf – Use by provider – Internet use on smartphones and game consoles – satellite – cable
I
title
Lecture series on information science: Digital meets society – Gamification on social live streaming services – By Katrin Scheibe and Franziska Zimmer
II.
Cloud trends 2022
Redefining the Multi Cloud , ML-based Analytics, Green IT and Managed Cloud Security – By Peter Schmidt, Director Business Development, Syntax
III.
research center Julich
Public and academic libraries in dialogue
IV.
Market development
for streaming video on demand grows and shrinks in Corona cycles
Lecture series on information science:
digital meets society
Gamification on social live streaming services
Preliminary remark: Katrin Scheibe and Franziska Zimmer convey information in their article “What is Gamification? Where is it used and what is the benefit?” as part of the “Ring Lecture Information Science: Digital meets Society” (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) primarily backgrounds and areas of application of gamification. As part of her research, the use of gamification on so-called social live streaming services is also discussed. As an extension and connection of the articles about gamification (by Nader Fadl) and social live streaming services (by Wolfgang G. Stock and Kaja J. Fietkiewicz), this article follows, in which the interaction of both topics is described in more detail and explained based on research. You can watch the corresponding video of the online lecture series on the YouTube channel of the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf.
By Katrin Scheibe and Franziska Zimmer
Katrin Scheibe
_____________________________________________________
What is gamification?
_____________________________________________________
Gamification is the use of game elements in a non-game context (Deterding et al., 2011). These include, for example, levels, rankings, badges or rewards. A very well-known example of gamification from everyday life is the stamp card of a restaurant, where you get a stamp for paying for a meal. Once you have collected a certain number of stamps, you will receive a free meal as a reward. As already mentioned in the article “The Power of Games – How users can be motivated in a playful way in a digital world and valuable data can be obtained” by Nader Fadl, gamification is used in many areas. In online services, it is primarily used to motivate users, increase user engagement and thus bind users to a system.
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What is live streaming?
_____________________________________________________
Live streaming has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially since popular social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram added this feature to their services. Live streaming is a real-time transmission in the form of a video, comparable to live television shows. However, in most cases, live streaming involves broadcasting live from your own home. The users who broadcast their own program are also known as streamers. Other users of the live streaming service can watch various live broadcasts and communicate and interact with the streamer and other viewers via chat messages.
We distinguish between three types of live streaming services: general live streaming services without any specification, topic-specific live streaming services for a specific interest group whose content dominates the streams, such as online gaming and e-sports or art, and such services where the live streaming function has been embedded into an existing service (e.g. YouTube Live). In particular, the topic-specific live streaming service Twitch.tv, which largely broadcasts video game playing, has seen a large increase in users during the coronavirus lockdown. Well-known musicians used several live streaming services during the lockdown to play live concerts in front of the largest possible virtual audience.
Most users strive to escape boredom, have fun and be entertained, or meet new people and talk to other people by using live streaming services (Zimmer and Scheibe, 2019). For some users, being mentioned by a streamer in their stream is particularly attractive. For this purpose, virtual gifts are often sent to the streamers, which sometimes even have to be paid for with real money. This creates a “parasocial relationship” between streamers and viewers. This refers to a psychological relationship in which a recipient of virtual media feels attracted to or friends with a virtual actor, even though there is little or no exchange between the two sides. Gifts are just one possible gamification element that can be found on live streaming services. Live streaming services use a variety of gamification elements, as Katrin Scheibe and Franziska Zimmer (2019) found out in one of their studies.
Franziska Zimmer
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Which gamification elements are used on live streaming services?
____________________________________________________
To investigate this, a content analysis of the gamification elements used on several live streaming services was carried out. A total of 21 live streaming services were assessed and checked for 14 different gamification elements. Eleven Chinese live streaming services were taken into account. In China, live streaming is a billion-dollar industry that has made the country the leading provider of over 200 services. YouTube, QQ.com and Facebook, which are among the top ten most visited websites in the world, were also examined (Alexa, 2021). Nine of the 21 services use ten or even more of the 14 game elements considered; eight of these nine services come from China. In particular, the function of following others (20), leaderboards (16), gifts (15), virtual currency (15), badges (15) as well as points (14), levels (13) and progress bars (12) have been implemented on many of the 21 investigated live streaming services discovered. The numbers in brackets indicate the number of services.
Screenshot of a stream by user Chelsea-Adelaide on YouNow.com – from a viewer’s perspective (taken on July 26, 2021). In the live streaming window you can see a gift that the streamer receives from one of the viewers, which is displayed as a purple “thumbs up” with “x400”. On the right side, the chat history and a ranking of the current top viewers are shown. Information about the streamer is displayed above the stream. There is a badge on the nickname and a progress bar underneath, which shows how many likes you are missing until the next badge. On the left side you can see other currently popular streamers who are currently live.
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How much do gamification elements on live streaming services motivate different user groups?
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Users of live streaming services can be divided into three groups. On the one hand there are the streamers , who are users who broadcast the live program, and on the other hand there are two types of recipients. One type of recipient is those who actively participate in the stream using the chat function or send attention and support to the streamer through gifts. These are referred to as “ participants ”. There are also recipients who watch the stream without actively participating in what is happening (“ viewers ”).
YouNow was chosen as a case study in our research because this platform offers many gamification elements. Using an online survey, users were asked how motivating the individual gamification elements were. Users should also indicate which user group they feel like they belong to (streamers, participants, viewers).
Streamers in particular reported being highly motivated by most of the gamification elements. Streamers experience these gamification elements when a viewer becomes active and activates one of the functions, be it sending a message, taking up a subscription or giving the streamer a gift. For participating participants, the gamification elements are largely motivating insofar as they are important for their participation. The gamification elements, which are experienced by all users of the system, were perceived as less motivating.
Streamer
Participant
All users
Get fans
Comment on stream
level
get comments
Be a guest on a stream
Coins
Get premium gifts
become a fan
Ranking
Get subscribers
Become a subscriber
Badges
get gifts
Distribute premium gifts
Crown
Table with gamification elements that can be used and experienced by different user groups. The dark orange means: very motivating, the medium orange: motivating, and the light orange: rather motivating. Other possible answers were: neutral, not very motivating, not motivating, not motivating at all.
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What do we take away from gamification on live streaming services?
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At least on the YouNow service we examined, all gamification elements were perceived by users as motivating, so none of the elements had a negative effect on user motivation.
What is striking is that a greater variety of gamification elements can be found on live streaming services than on other social media services. One possible explanation is that live streaming is primarily one-to-many (or 1:many) communication. This means that primarily one person communicates with many other people.
Chinese live streaming services in particular offer a variety of gamification elements and apply them to their service in a variety of ways. In China there are already more than 200 different platforms that offer live streaming. This means that there is a lot of competition, which leads operators to innovate to differentiate themselves from the other services. There will certainly be some innovations in gamification on video and live streaming services in the future as the market grows and new platforms enter the market. Various areas from e-commerce to online teaching to entertainment make use of live streaming, especially in connection with gamification.
literature
Alexa, (2021). The top 500 sites on the web – Global. Retrieved from https://www.alexa.com/topsites on July 24, 2021
Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., and Nacke, L., (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: defining “gamification”]. In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments (MindTrek ’11). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 9–15. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040
Scheibe, K. (2018) The Impact of Gamification in Social Live Streaming Services. In: Meiselwitz G. (eds) Social Computing and Social Media. Technologies and Analytics. SCSM 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 10914. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91485-5_7
Scheibe, K. & Zimmer, F. (2019). Game Mechanics on Social Live Streaming Service Websites. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, January 8 – 11, 2019, Grand Wailea, Maui (pp. 1486-1495). Honolulu, HI: HICSS (ScholarSpace).
Zimmer, F. & Scheibe, K. (2019). What Drives Streamers? Users’ Characteristics and Motivations on Social Live Streaming Services [What motivates streamers? User characteristics and motivation on social livestreaming services]. In Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, January 8 – 11, 2019, Grand Wailea, Maui (pp. 2538-2547). Honolulu, HI: HICSS (ScholarSpace)
contact person
Katrin Scheibe, BA, MA, HHU Düsseldorf, email: katrin. Scheibe@hhu.de
Franziska Zimmer, BA, MA, HHU Düsseldorf, email: franziska.zimmer@hhu.de
Katrin Scheibe and Franziska Zimmer are research assistants and doctoral students in the Department of Information Science at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. They have been researching topics related to live streaming services and gamification together for six years now. This also includes research into the information behavior of users of other social media services. In the last three years, her research has increasingly focused on the information behavior and media use of people with a refugee background.
Cloud trends 2022
Redefining the multi cloud ,
ML-based analytics,
green IT and managed cloud security
By Peter Schmidt, Director Business Development, Syntax
Peter Schmidt
(Syntax) We have identified the cloud trends for 2022 primarily as multi-cloud management, container-based app development and modernization, analytics in the cloud, green IT and cloud security.
Trend 1: (Re-definition of) Multi Cloud. Companies that operate their IT systems entirely in the public cloud are the exception. Hybrid or multi-cloud models are mostly used – with combinations of public cloud and private cloud environments as well as classic on-premises data centers and edge infrastructure. One of the most important tasks for the coming year: creating uniform management and control mechanisms for the multi-cloud in order to be able to manage the “patchwork” across all instances – centrally, efficiently and in accordance with legal requirements, for example data protection.
Trend 2: Container technology as a driver for “cloud native”. As we move towards a cloud-native approach, containers and a strategy for building and operating a container management infrastructure are becoming increasingly important. Containers play a role both in the gradual migration of functions of classic monolithic applications and in the deployment of application parts on edge devices, for example for IoT scenarios. As a mature technology, containers will become firmly established in companies’ IT infrastructures. For example, they are increasingly relying on the SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud, which can also be expanded to include connected edge devices through the use of container technology. This creates more transparent processes and represents an important step towards digital production.
Trend 3: AI and ML-based analytics in the cloud. Companies will rely even more on cloud-based analytics to optimize and automate their processes based on informed strategic decisions. Algorithms that use artificial intelligence and machine learning reveal valuable insights. Here, the cloud – also in conjunction with the corresponding data lake services from hyperscalers – offers extensive possibilities that in most cases exceed the performance of classic on-premises environments – especially in the area of digital manufacturing.
Trend 4: Sustainability and Green IT. The topic of sustainability in IT will be high on the agenda for companies. The need for computing power and the associated energy consumption are constantly increasing. A move to the cloud means more efficient, on-demand use of IT resources, savings in hardware and the use of energy-efficient hyperscaler data centers. Microsoft says it has been operating its Azure servers in a CO2-neutral manner since 2012 and wants to switch completely to renewable energies by 2025. And Amazon also plans to use exclusively renewable energy sources for AWS from 2030. The public cloud brings benefits for business – and is better for the environment.
Trend 5: Managed Cloud Security. The sharp increase in ransomware attacks on corporate data centers will encourage more and more IT managers to secure their business-critical data in the cloud using disaster recovery mechanisms. This is usually a very complex undertaking, especially in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. As an alternative to setting up your own Security Operations Center (SOC), the trend is increasingly towards outsourcing these activities to an experienced service provider with the appropriate capacities and proven expertise for managed cloud security as part of a professional security operations company.
research center Julich
Public and academic libraries
in dialogue
Dear ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues,
WissKom2022 will take place from June 21st to 23rd, 2022 with the title “How do you do that? – Public and academic libraries in dialogue”, which is organized by the central library of the Research Center Jülich, in cooperation with the central library of the Düsseldorf city libraries. Interested parties can submit their contributions to the Call for Papers until January 3, 2022. The topic of the conference was chosen because academic and public libraries usually operate in separate worlds, but have more in common than is apparent at first glance.
Many libraries face the same challenges. What do academic libraries and public libraries have in common? What sets them apart in their paths and goals for the future? How and what can libraries learn from each other? The focus of WissKom2022 is “Digital Strategy”, “Open Access”, “Sustainability”, “Open Space in Libraries”, “User Groups” and “Information and Advice”.
We are looking forward to your contributions!
To the website: http://www.wisskom2022.de
For the call: https://go.fzj.de/wisskom2022_cfp
Kind regards, Thomas Arndt (contact person for speakers)
Research Center Jülich GmbH+49 2461 61-2907
zb-conference@fz-juelich.de www.wisskom2022.de
Streaming market development
Video on demand grows
and shrinks in Corona cycles
(AGF Videoforschung) The use of paid video-on-demand offers fell slightly in late summer/autumn. In the “AGF TV Platform 2021-II” study, 41.3 percent of those surveyed said they had used a paid streaming service in the last four weeks – a decrease of 1.8 percentage points (2021-I: 43.1 Percent). “After the months-long restrictions in the wake of the Corona crisis, people obviously used the summer and autumn to pursue leisure activities away from the use of moving images. We observed this not only in the linear TV measurement, but also in the streaming area and this development can now also be seen in the platform study: This Corona effect affects almost all streaming offers.”
Says Kerstin Niederauer- Kopf, chairwoman of the management board of AGF Videoforschung.
When asked about the use of online video offerings – regardless of whether they were accessed for a fee or free of charge – 30.5 percent of those surveyed said they had used Netflix in the last four weeks. In the previous study 2020-I it was 32.3 percent. Prime Video has 22.6 percent (2021-I: 24.1 percent), Disney+ has 8.3 percent (2021-I: 8.6 percent). The negative Corona effect is also evident in the online offerings of TV channels. Compared to the previous wave, the minimum monthly use of these offers fell to 31.1 percent (2021-I: 35.9 percent), but is still slightly above the level of 2020 (2020-II: 29.5 percent). The offerings of public channels, which were able to benefit significantly from increased interest in news during the Corona pandemic, recorded a decline to 25.2 percent (2021-I: 30.2 percent), but are also above the level of the year 2020. The same applies to videos on news portals at 16.9 percent (2021-I: 21.5 percent).
In the current survey, only TV Now can show slight gains (since November 4th, 2021 RTL+): 5.8 percent of those surveyed said they had used RTL Deutschland’s streaming service in the past four weeks (2021-I: 5, 4 percent).
Internet usage on smartphones and game consoles is increasing / satellite is more popular than cable. Internet and device usage in the last four weeks is also collected for the platform study. Internet usage has increased again compared to 2021-I, from 86.0 to 89.1 percent. Smartphones (82.0 percent) and PCs/laptops (73.2 percent) are particularly used for online use. This is followed by smart TV devices (48.9 percent) and tablets (38.9 percent). Games consoles grow to 15.9 percent.
When it comes to TV reception levels, satellite remains in first place with a share of 45.8 percent. Cable follows in second place with 41.8 percent. IPTV comes to just under ten percent, terrestrial reception is 2.5 percent.
Outlook. Niederauer- Kopf: “Corona is currently determining people’s lives again. We assume that possible restrictions and subsequent easing of public life will once again be reflected in the use of moving images. The pandemic, which has been ongoing since 2020, should therefore always be taken into account in comparisons.” So Niederauer-Head.
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