Social software: the building blocks of online communities

1
Social software the building blocks of online
communities

• IMKE CSC2006
• Kaido Kikkas

2
Innovation or another buzzword?

• IT 'magic words' through the ages
• programming
• expert system
• multimedia
• e- (learning, banking, work etc)
• new media
• Social software? Yes and no

3
Hard to define

• Roughly overlapping with new media
• New communication technologies plus their impact
  on human interaction and formation of virtual
  communities
• Stowe Boyd SoSo is the antithesis of groupware
• traditional collaborative software approach
  project-based, 'top-down'
• social software approach stemming from
  individual, spontaneous, 'bottom-up'

4
Boyd's criteria

• Support for conversational interaction between
  individuals or groups incl. chance to determine
  the pace of interaction by choosing a suitable
  channel (see previous lecture)
• Support for social feedback E. S. Raymond and
  CatB reputation as the basis (whether connected
  to the real identity or not). Sometimes can have
  direct financial influence
• Support for social networks reflects existing
  relationships and builds new ones. 6 degrees!

5
Matt Webb 6 factors

• identity steady lt social capital (reputation)
• presence awareness of others state indicators
• relationships friendship gt privileges
• conversations ct. messaging cont. vs
  discrete
• reputation objective or tradeable
• sharing helping, community building, fame

6
Categories of social software

• Today's Internet is not only a 'network of
  network' but a network of very diverse social
  applications
• All the previously seen factors are evident, but
  the proportions vary a lot

7
Mailing lists

• Among the oldest, sometimes not counted among
  social software proper
• First attempts soon after 1972
• Wider spread after the software arrived
• LISTSERV 1986
• Majordomo 1992

8
Usenet

• Probably one of the least known
• 1979 UUCP, 1985 NNTP (TCP/IP) - Usenet is not
  Internet
• Network of news servers, each hosts a number of
  newsgroups
• An article posted to one server is forwarded to
  others
• A pull medium (ct. lists)

9
The Great 8

• comp. computer-related discussions
  (comp.software, comp.sys.amiga)
• misc. Miscellaneous topics (misc.education,
  misc.forsale, misc.kids)
• news. Discussions and announcements about news
  (meaning Usenet, not current events)
  (news.groups, news.admin)
• rec. Recreation and entertainment (rec.music,
  rec.arts.movies)
• sci. Science related discussions
  (sci.psychology, sci.research)
• soc. Social discussions (soc.college.org,
  soc.culture.african)
• talk. Talk about various controversial topics
  (talk.religion, talk.politics, talk.origins)
• humanities. Fine arts, literature, and
  philosophy (humanities.classics,
  humanities.design.misc)

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Others

• alt. - informal, more freedom, specific groups
• alt.binaries. - various files
• Regional and language groups
• Business groups

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Web groups

• Similar to the previous ones, but has a Web
  interface and users can choose the operation
  mode
• purely web-based (like a web forum)
• like a newsgroup (messages are downloaded)
• like a mailing list (messages are mailed)
• Big players Yahoo!, Google, MSN

12
IRC

• Internet Relay Chat , Jarkko Oikarinen 1988
• Usenet-like server system, channels, text-based
  communication
• Dynamic and informal (no logins)
• Was used during many international crises to
  forward objective information

13
Talkers chatrooms

• Virtual spaces for real-time interaction
• First one 1984, the golden age were the 90s
• Layout often imitates reality
• Three-level conversation
• Telnet vs clients vs Web interface

14
IM

• I Seek You gt ICQ, 1995
• MSN, AIM, Yahoo!, Jabber
• Multi-protocol messengers
• Trillian
• GAIM

15
Web forums

• Simpler than the web groups, but
• easier to maintain (more control locally)
• easier to build one's own
• Lots of free/open-source packages
• phpBB
• Slash
• PHP-Nuke ....

16
Blogs

• Early ones Tim Berners Lee, Justin Hall
• Weblog 1997
• We blog 1999
• The boom lt aggregation standards (RSS etc)
• Like IRC, have been used as free-speech tool
• Photo- and videoblogs

17
Podcasting

• iPod broadcasting actually iPod was not
  needed
• Audio blog or on-demand radio
• uses RSS to spread the content

18
Wiki

• wiki lt quickly. Wiki-wiki!
• Ward Cunningham 1995 WikiWikiWeb
• everyone can edit
• editing is simple, no need for HTML
• Wikipedia, NuPedia, GNUpedia
• Wider use
• Less open now, 'soft security' is not enough

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Social bookmarking, tagging

• First link repository Yahoo! 1994
• attempts during the dot-com boom
• del.icio.us 1999
• bookmarks tags
• Tagging is superior to automatic metadata
• Technorati blog search tags
• Targetted advertising

20
Media sharing

• Wild times beginning of the 90s
• Mad times end of the 90s
• New century brought some reason
• Flickr photoes many use CC licenses
• YouTube Flash-based videos
• community censorship
• large players start to reconsider their position

21
Online games

• First MUDs - automatic ADD
• 90s
• New century MMORPG
• MUDs are still alive
• Pictures ready-made vs DIY?

22
Social networking

• Personal profiles something else
• groups
• messaging
• ratings
• ...
• MySpace, Friendster, Orkut...
• Various problems

23
Social shopping

• Introduction of many SoSo features to online
  shops (especially Amazon.com)
• Parallel with real life shopping centres gt
  entertainment facilities

24
Social citations

• More scientific variant of social bookmarking
  exact quotes and references are needed
• Connotea, BibSonomy

25
Evolutionary computing

• aka human-based computation
• specific parts of a problem are assigned to
  different people, solutions are synthesized from
  answers
• Google Answers, Yahoo! Answers, 3form.com

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Virtual or real? Or both?

• Clay Shirky's experiment
• Real-life meeting
• online chat between people in the same room
• Two-tier communication
• Ct. EUDORA LEARN IP 2006 Haapsalu
• Sometimes gives good results

27
Conclusions

• SoSo is a crucial component in widening the
  influence of IT
• Like all IT, changes rapidly
• Sometimes mixing real and virtual pays off