I think I half-promised to do something around social software, and since that’s more than likely to be the organising feature of the up-coming book, it could do with some attention. JG was of the opinion that the label ’social software’ was unhelpful, because many forms of software have a communicative (social) function, and may be used by particular bounded groups and also as work, or at the very least task-orientated affinity spaces. I think I’ve got that right, and it’s a good point to make, because drawing up a boundary may exclude all sorts of interesting stuff and depending on your point of view, that ‘other’ stuff becomes less interesting. Alternatively of course those vibrant and hugely popular tools and communities could simply be dismissed as only being social, being less in some way or another.
In the discourse around online communities the term ’social software’ is of course regularly used (not that that alone invalidates JG’s point), but I was using it in that accepted sense, assuming that people knew what I was on about. I ended up suggesting that it was something to do with community, participation, and low content software - in hindsight I could have said transparent. Transparent because there could not really be a blog at all until someone posted on it.
So I suppose the point of social software is to create a space for participation, for the development of community and that is its sole raison d’etre (irrespective of its particular software history). Isn’t this the essence of the killer MySpace - that has become so hugely popular. If MySpace is about anything, it’s about what people put on MySpace and how their individual stuff inter-relates. From Wikipedia, I got the singularly unhelpful line posing as a definition, suggesting that social software is
the use of two or more modes of computer-mediated communication that result in community formation.
At least that emphasises the importance of communication. Here, though, there’s plenty of ongoing discussion of social software. So much that you can almost abstract what it is from the examples given. On the linked page, for example, one discovers the list meme and that really does seem to pin it down through exemplification. So here goes:
I’m kicking off an informal poll: what are your top five favorite social software services currently in use? I’ll start:I wonder if this begins to shed a liitle light on the idea?1. (drumroll, please)… Flickr. Shocking, I know.
2. del.icio.us
3. My Web 2.0 — I tend to store everything in My Web 2.0 and only a subset of things to del.icio.us, but I use both frequently to find cool stuff.
4. Memeorandum — when I need news fast, which is all the time, this is what I use.
5. YouTube is emerging as a new favorite. I like that I can so easily embed video on my own blogs.
Hooray! A list meme! And also a very thoughtful and thought-provoking position on “social networking.” I think you’re spot on with refering to the new and emerging collaborative-social spaces online as thoroughly participatory and associated with shared affinities of one kind or another (I don’t think that ‘community’, though, is a necessary feature or characteristics of these spaces). The problem with the term, ’social software’, as you’ve pointed out, Guy, is that there’s a kind of conceptual blurring between the online service application (e.g., the Flickr templates, the structure of blogger.com) and the practices of using them. The applications themselves (I always struggle with what to call the coded bits of these spaces, because “software” doesn’t really cut it anymore. The notion of “software” belongs to a Web 1.0 conception of computing, while the spaces talked about in your post, Guy, are more about the services and platforms of Web 2.0–I see you referred to them as “servcies”, too, and think that’s really the best term at this stage) are certainly designed to faciliate sociality and interactions and the like, but aren’t “social” until they’re used–and then, of course, people invent all sorts of uses for these spaces that were never envisaged by the original coders and developers and which then in turn get built into/coded into the service and so it goes.
And I have a question for you, Guy. You’ve included Memeorandum in your list of fav social software online, but I would see this more as a news and discussion aggregator (a la Bloglines, Blogdex, etc.) than an example of social software per se. So how did it make the final “cut”? I just want to check I’m understanding social software and am really interested in what your selection criteria is.
So, here are my five current fave online participatory spaces:
1. Wikipedia
2. Blogger.com
3. Flickr
4. Bloggingporjectrunway.blogspot.com
5. Fark.org (okay, this is stretching the concept a bit, but the photoshopping stuff counts, don’t you think?)
Comment by Michele — April 14, 2006 @ 7:18 pm
The defining characteristics for me are about participation and user-defined topic or content - the only trouble is, that these can be s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d to cover Web 1.00 stuff, too! So I suppose I’m still thinking about this. There’s a useful discussion I just came across . Thanks for your comments!
Comment by Guy — April 15, 2006 @ 11:56 am
For me a lot of the important issues around this have to do with two ‘i’ words: inclusion and interactivity. I like O’Reilly’s ideas about reaching out to the long tail of the web, and about mobilising collective expertise and intelligence.
Personally, I never refer to social software other than in a snigger quotes sense to refer to facilities for ‘putting people in touch with each other with a view to friendships, outings …..’, as the old Personal ads in the Nelson Evening Mail used to go.
Another thing that occurs to me around this stuff is that so much of the emerging economy looks like it is starting to look toward some kind of condition of ‘post scarcity’ — leisure society and the like. Participating in this economy is predicated to a large extent on getting people online and keeping them there. Finding things for them to do that help to generate ‘virtuous circles’ — participation that adds economic value in all directions. Every act has multiple effects. So a lot of the software and services and the ‘logic’ that operates in the area we are broadly talking about is based on concepts like leverage, which makes MORE out of less, and that ‘adds value’ at every turn.
O’Reilly pitches Web 2.0 as a business model. I think that, as always, is the bottom line. But more than a business model, I think we are talking largely about an economic model here — and an economic model that ranges over conventional economics as well as attention economics. There has to be inclusion and interactivity to keep people in the game.
Comment by Colin Lankshear — April 25, 2006 @ 1:30 am