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Social software is a broad term used to describe software-based tools that facilitate interaction and collaboration. Social software connects people together intellectually and makes it possible to share and evolve ideas. Social software is not bound just by what features the tool provides, but also by social conventions and etiquette on how to use it appropriately. Such software includes email, Usenet, IRC, instant messaging, blogs, wikis, NNTP, folksonomy, 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. However, in recent times more sophisticated tools are emerging. Social software is now being used to support situtations that so far allowed one-to-many relations only. Thus one may review products on e-commerce sites or comment on news articles.
Examples
Internet Relay Chats and Instant Messaging are ways for users to join chat rooms and communicate with another person, or with many people at once. Users may create a chatroom and invite others. When others accept the invitation, they are taken to the room containing the other members, similar to the way conference calling works with phones. This facilitates both one-to-one and many-to-many interaction. Examples include dalnet, undernet, efnet.
A screenshot of the MacAddict message boards shows several different forums grouped by category. Each forums contains several threads and each thread several posts. Originally modeled after the real-world paradigm of bulletin boards, internet forums allow users to post a "topic" for others to review. Other users can view the topic and post their own comments in a linear fashion, one after the other. Topic are usually displayed according to the time of the last post. Therefore, more recent posts, or "threads," and the ones with the most recent replies appear at the top of the list. Forums can contain many different categories in a hierarchy according to topics and subtopics. Other features include the ability to post images or files and the ability to quote another user's post with special formatting in your post. Forums often grow in popularity until they can boast several thousand members posting replies to tens of thousands of topics continuously. Examples include ezboard.com (http://www.ezboard.com), freerepublic.com (http://www.freerepublic.com).
A typical blog, showing summaries of recent posts, links to full recent posts, external links, and a profile of the owner. Blogs, short for web logs, are like online journals for a particular person. The owner will post a message periodically allowing others to comment. Topics often include the owner's daily life or views on politics or a particular subject important to them. There are 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 diary, some blogs also allow comments on the entries thereby a discussion forum, have blogrolls, i.e., links to other blogs which the owner reads, and/or have trackback (http://www.movabletype.org/trackback/beginners/) which allows one blog to notify another blog, creating an inter-blog conversation. In summary, 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)
Social networks allow people to come together online around shared interests or causes. For example, some sites provide dating services where users will post their personal profiles, location, age, gender, etc, and are able to search for a partner. Examples include aroundme, ArtBoom, Orkut, Friendster, and Freecycle.
See also: Category:Social networking
Bookmarks Manager
Some sites allow users to post their list of bookmarks—or favorite websites—for others to search and view. The object is for people to meet others with whom they share a common interest. Examples include del.icio.us, furl (http://www.furl.net) and Simpy (http://www.simpy.com).
See also
External links
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
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