Deprecated. This material represents early efforts and may be of interest to historians. It doe not describe current VIVO efforts.
Deprecated. This material represents early efforts and may be of interest to historians. It doe not describe current VIVO efforts.
Strengths |
Weaknesses |
Strengths vs. Weaknesses
The VIVO project and the national networking initiative will rely heavily on the institutions who are participating in the network. Institutions will require time to organize and customize data ingest tools and display ingested information in context. Each institution will need to provide resources to inform users about VIVO, and to enable continued support for it. VIVO has the ability to update data automatically, but also allows users to modify parts of their profiles by using institutional authentication procedures. It therefore compares favorably with other social networks because the data is consistently maintained, providing accuracy and currency. VIVO's faceted search capability is also a strength, as searches return results will be tailored to the needs of each user.
A few disadvantages may result from having a pioneered a unique web application. Users are often skeptical on how the technology functions for new innovations. Many people like to observe technological advances for a length of time before using them, and would like to know the benefits of participating. As the number of social networks keeps growing, and user fatigue also increases. Businesses and organizations are starting to also participate in the development of new networking tools. This can create problems for users in terms of organizing the social networks they value and want to spend their time on.
Opportunities vs. Threats
The opportunities include brand awareness and the ability to speed along technological advances. The connection with the institution creates massive distribution channels to effectively market this new application. In addition, the social network aspect of the program continues to expand regardless of the current position of the economy. Many future applications and features can be built, depending on the ways in which a user or user group might like to use supplied content. The personalization capabilities and the ability to add resources to the existing VIVO can occur over.
In order to succeed with the adoption of VIVO, changes in the functionality of the web application will drastically affect the early adopters. One way to prevent the negative impact of this is to conduct focus groups with a small sample market. This will allow room for improvement and effective training. Another threat is the expansion of competitors, such as developers of other social networking sites. Depending on the functionalities that users value at such sites, this can occupy a user's time and commitment to VIVO. VIVO has some similarities to the typical social networking site but also differs significantly from it in many ways. It also has a competitive advantage in being able to display unique, target-specific information. Until other programs like VIVO are created the threat from other social networking tools is likely to be minimal.