Social software are communication tools that facilitate interaction and collaboration by using social convention rather than software features. Such software includes email, Usenet, IRC, instant messaging, blogs, wikis, NNTP and virtual online communities.
While email, IRC, and instant message applications are becoming increasingly common, there are other emerging tools like weblogs and wikis that are changing how people communicate, especially by allowing many-to-many interactions. In other words, the concept of social software isn't new and we've already had some for years. However, there are more sophisticated tools emerging in recent times. Social software is being incorporated into otherwise one-to-many situations, such as the ability to review products on e-commerce sites or comment on news articles.
Examples
Internet Relay Chat is a standard that allows users to join chat rooms and instantly communicate with others in that room. Examples include dalnet, undernet, efnet.
Examples include ezboard.com http://www.ezboard.com , freerepublic.com http://www.freerepublic.com .
There are already many websites that address the history of blogs, like The History of Weblogs http://newhome.weblogs.com/historyOfWeblogs and weblogs: a history and perspective http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html
Blogs mean many things to different people : ranging from "online journal" to "easily updated personal website." While these definitions are not wrong, they fail to capture the power of blogs as social software. Beyond being a simple homepage, or an online dairy, some blogs also
- allow comments on the entries thereby a discussion forum;
- have blogrolls, i.e., links to other blogs which the owner reads;
- have trackback http://www.movabletype.org/trackback/beginners/ which allows one blog to notify another blog, creating an inter-blog conversation.
More importantly, blogs engage readers and build a virtual community around a particular person or interest.
Examples include Slashdot, LiveJournal, BlogSpot http://www.blogspot.com
Examples include the original Portland Pattern Repository wiki, MeatballWiki, CommunityWiki , and possibly Wikipedia, Wiktionary http://www.wiktionary.org , Wikisource http://www.wikisource.org . The status of Wikipedia and related projects as "true" Wikis or as "typical" wikis has been questioned. [1] http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiPediaIsNotTypical
Examples include aroundme , ArtBoom, Orkut, Friendster. See Category:Social networking
Other
del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager, as is furl http://www.furl.net .
See also
External links
- A Group is its Own Worst Enemy http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html and Social Software and the Politics of Groups http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_politics.html by Clay Shirky. Published on the "Networks, Economics, and Culture" mailing list.
- Many-to-Many: a group weblog on Social Software http://www.corante.com/many/
- Social Software Alliance: Wiki on Social Software taskforces http://www.socialtext.net/ssa/
Commercial Software
- Socialtext http://www.socialtext.com/ Enterprise Social Software
- Groove http://www.groove.net/
- IBM's Lotus http://www.lotus.com/
- K-Collector http://www.evectors.com/itkcollector Enterprise Knowledge Aggregator
Last updated: 05-03-2005 17:50:55
