The Social Impacts of Software Choices
Grok Headline matches for The Social Impacts of Software Choices
Social Issues Surround Social Software
(Ziff Davis)
Social Issues Surround Social Software
(Ziff Davis)
06/25/2004 10:06 AMZiff Davis - Participants in the Supernova conference give insight
into the social dynamics around the use of online social networking
services, Weblogs and wikis.
Computers And Software Choices
Computers And Software Choices
09/25/2004 03:09 PMUseless Knowledge Sep 25 2004 6:09PM GMT
Social Issues Surround Social Software
Social Issues Surround Social Software
06/25/2004 09:01 AMParticipants in the Supernova conference give insight into the social
dynamics around the use of online social networking services, Weblogs
and wikis.
Professional social software
Professional social software
12/31/2003 12:21 AMVia D. Keith Robinson, LinkedIn is a social software
system that works kind of like Friendster but is targetted at
professionals. You sign up, create a profile that includes your
industry and geographical area and it provides you with a number of
tools to find other people with similar interests. More importantly,
it lets you build up a network of contacts through which you can
access other people. If nothing else, it's a great way of maintaining
your CV.
Keith says he's had a few leads for freelance work from it so it
appears to work. I've created an account; if you sign up, drop me an
invite (my email address can be found via my contact page) and
provided I have at least a vague inkling of who you are I'll add you
to my immediate network.
Incidentally, the most connected member is currently one Joi Ito with 493 connections. I'm
guessing LinkedIn follows power laws just as
much as the rest of the web does.
Social Software for Set-Top boxes...
Social Software for Set-Top boxes...
03/23/2005 07:59 PMYou can download the core part of the material that follows as a
PDF presentation entitled Social Software for Set-Top Boxes (4Mb).
A buddy-list for television:
Imagine a buddy-list on your television that you could bring onto your
screen with the merest tap of a 'friends' key on your remote control.
The buddy list would be the first stage of an interface that would let
you add and remove friends, and see what your friends are watching in
real-time - whether they be watching live television or something
stored on their PVRs. Adding friends would be simple - you could enter
letters on screen using your remote, or browse your existing friends'
contact lists.
Being able to see what your friends were watching on television
would remind you of programmes that you also wanted to see, it would
help you spot programmes that your social circle thought were
interesting and it could start to give you a shared social context for
conversations about the media that you and your friends had both
enjoyed.
Obviously there might be some programmes that you might wish
to view with a significant other, but wouldn't necessarily want to
advertise to the rest of the world that you were watching. For this
reason your personalised settings would have to have all kinds of
options to help you control how you were being represented to the
wider world that were as simple to use and unobtrusive as possible.
Primary among the tools at your disposal would be your ability to tell
your set-top box not to advertise that you were watching any shows
marked as for adults only and to mark certain channels as similarly
private. These settings would obviously be on by default.
Presence alerts:
One of the core functions of a socially enabled set-top box would be
to create the impression of watching television alongside your
peer group and friends - even if you were geographically distant from
one another. One key way to do this would be to create a sensation of
simultaneity - to remind you that there are other people in your
social circle doing things at the same time as you. This would allow
you to create a mental impression of what your friends were doing.
Here are two versions of an alert that could fade up gently onto
the screen when someone on your buddy list changes channel. These
alerts would work in two ways - if the person was changing channel and
landed on a station as a programme was just about to begin or within
the first three or four minutes of a programme, then the alert would
be immediate. This would give you the opportunity to change over to
that channel as well without missing too much of the show. If -
however - they were changing over to a channel in the middle of a show
or they changed the channel again within ten seconds, then the alert
would not be sent. They would have to have been watching the new
channel for a few minutes before an alert would be sent. There would
be nothing more intrusive and irritating than watching someone
compulsively flick between channels at a distance (except perhaps
being in the room with them as they did so).
The most important part of all these alerts is that they provide
you with the option to join the person concerned in whichever
programme they happen to now be watching...
Watch with your friends:
Now we have the concept of joining a friend to watch a show, we have
to ask what should that experience be like? How should your parallel
engagement manifest itself. Traditionally, net-mediated social spaces
have tended towards text as a communicative medium. But this would
seem like an enormously clumsy way to interact during a television
programme.
Television is an audio-visual medium and there's no reason why your
engagement with your friends shouldn't also be audio-visual. For this
reason a simple high quality webcam above the television would help
you see how your friends were responding to what was on screen - it
would help you feel an experience of shared engagement without there
being a need for overt discussion. By default your conversations with
your friends would be muted, and you could - of course - minimise
their images if they started to get annoying, but if you wanted to
shout and scream alongside your friends, then you'd simply turn the
sound back on. This would be the perfect form of engagement around
certain sporting events, or for making a well-known television
programme or film just the backgrounded context for a shared
conversation.
In the mock-up below, you can see the cameras of three of your
friends on the right. One person has wandered away from their
TV...
Chatting and planning:
If your friends were in the room with you during an ad break, you
might chat about the programme you've just been watching or bitch
about the adverts in front of you. You might turn the sound down low
for a few seconds and talk about something else completely. There are
lots of contexts where the programme on television might not be
the main focus of activity around the television. These might
be times when it's still important to have a sense of what's happening
on the screen, but where the social activity has been dragged to the
foreground.
Set-top box social software would have to support such engagements.
So how about a second view when you're in one of these social
situations? From having the programme in the foreground, one simple
switch of the button could drag your friends into the limelight. The
programme could be fully or partially muted, and your friends
automatically unmuted. Then you could chat to each other about the
programme you'd just watched, or wait for the adverts to end together.
You could even use these opportunities to plan what to watch next. If
this was handled in a similar way to group formation and parties in
online gaming structures like Halo 2, then perhaps one person could
even set up the next programme and stream it to everyone else, or cue
forward to show their friends the best part of a particular dance
sequence or the key quote from a political interview.
Choosing channels and playing games:
Having this technology in place under your television could create a
tremendous platform for all kinds of other applications or games to be
layered on top of your television experience. And these could be
equally usable with people in the same room as yourself. If you gave
everyone a personalised remote control (or installed universal remote
control software in something like a mobile phone) then people could
propose changing channels but be over-ruled by other people in the
room. The wonderful browsing experience of flicking through music
video channels could be turned into a game, with each song being rated
on the fly by everyone present or telepresent and records kept of
channels and songs that people tended to enjoy. The same controls
could be hooked up to other forms of interactive television or to
net-enabled functionality on the boxes themselves...
Sharing a social library:
And finally, to return to the idea of media discovery and regenerating
a social context around television programming, how about if the shows
that many of your friends had decided in advance to record were
automatically recorded by your device too. How would it be if you
never missed the show that everyone was talking about? And if you had
- your box could ask its peers for some kind of swarmed download if
anyone still had a copy and it could appear in your local library
overnight.
All this of course, is just the very beginning of the kinds of
things that you could create with a socially-enabled TV set-top box.
It's all basically just extensions of stuff that we're already doing
in other media. There are still technological barriers of course -
bandwidth and synchronisation being core problems. But we're gradually
on the way to solving them.
To repeat - If you'd like to download this piece as a simple to
read and print PDF presentation then you can do so here: Social Software for Set-Top Boxes (4Mb).
Addendum:
Here are a few related links that people have
brought to my attention since posting this stuff up or since I
finished work on the presentation and illustrations. I'm a little
cross with myself for not posting this stuff up before, but hey...
Read the comments
Shel on Social Software
Shel on Social Software
12/08/2003 12:01 AMShel Israel: Automating friendship with social software. "For me,
there’s a sense of déjà vu. VCs are ponying up
investments apparently without much sense of history. The business
plans often emulate the worst thinking of the Dot Com Era and VCs,
burned once seem undaunted by the experience."
Diego on Social Software
Diego on Social Software
02/10/2004 02:49 AMI've been catching up on some blog reading and noticed a good series
of posts by Diego Doval: social software: representing relationships
social software: automatic relationship clustering social software:
representing relationships, part 3 If you've thought much about the
whole social networking craze, have a look....
Social Software for Children
Social Software for Children
02/16/2004 01:14 PMFiona Romeo has posted her notes from her excellent ETCON
presentation, "Social Software for Children."
My talk focused on the findings of the BBC identity group's
qualitative research and usability testing with children and teens. I
shared insights into Jessica and Jake's approaches to identity
management, friendship and group membership, with the view to inform
actual product development work in this area.
While the purpose of my talk was to stimulate interest in the
question: How can we ensure children's safety while letting them have
expressive identities in social software?, I also gave some of my own
opinions about the appropriateness - or not - of existing social
software, and speculated about some positive future directions that
wikis and weblogs could take (e.g. using RSS syndication to involve
parents in the moderation of social spaces for children).
Link
Social Software for the Deads
Social Software for the Deads
02/10/2004 03:02 AM
Yesterday, I dreamt that my father died. So I woke up upset
and disturbed.
Disturbed because my father is going to Paris today, a trip I have
a bad foreboding
about. Chewing bad mojo all morning led me to think about
using blogs as a memorial
of sort and then spilled out into thinking about dead people in
social networks.
Here are some notable pieces from that trail:
Rewinding a blog back in time
I thought it might be neat to have a blog that moves backward in
time with posts sorted
in reverse order. So when I die, my blog will show posts from
the day before
I died and then the day before that and so on. There will be
blog comments by
visitors before and after I died. There are problems with
this idea but is worth
savoring to look for hidden passages to new ideas.
Blogging from the Grave
It would also be interesting to turn my blog into a wiki-ish blog
after I died so
that my friends can post to my blog for one reason or
another. In a sense, 'I'
continue to live within the mind of my friends so 'I' am still
blogging from the grave.
The Dead as a Party Host
I mentioned before that
a 'center' of a social network doesn't have to coordinate or even
be aware of the
synergy he or she creates. Come to think of it, the center
doesn't even have
to be alive. For example, people who met each other at a
funeral forms a social
network around a dead person.
Zombies in Orkut
What should happen when a member of Orkut or LinkedIn
dies? It's bound
to happen or have happened already. Should his node
disappear? That doesn't
make sense. Two people having a friend in common is relevant
even if the friend
happens to be dead. But if the node is left within the
network, what are the
downsides other than having to add a gravestone icon to the
profile?
7 pieces of social software you must
have,,,,,,,
7 pieces of social software you must
have,,,,,,,
05/07/2004 05:00 AMIncentives for online
software: the 7 pieces social software must have .... This is an
excellent read as I think about Drupal's role within social
software... After years of study, I found th
is blog from Matt Webb most interesting, and actually very
accurate. Enjoy reading. [drupal.org -
community plumbing]
This is an excellent read as I think about Drupal's role within
social software... After years of study, I found this blog from Matt Webb
most interesting, and actually very accurate. Enjoy
reading.
From the blog:
"We need mechanisms in the
online software to bring in a similar incentive structure to the
offline world. The single most useful piece of thinking I've been
using is Stewart Butterfield's March 2003 post on the
devices in social software, mechanisms successful
pieces of social software tend to have.
Identity
Presence
Relationships
Conversations
Groups
Reputation
Sharing
I'll describe each of these, as I see them, critiquing
AOL Instant Messanger (just as an exmaple), and then describe how we
put them into use.
Identity | Your identity is shown by a
screenname, which remains persistent through time. There are
incentives not to change this, like having your list of friends stored
on the server and only accessible through your screenname. This acts
as a pressure to not change identity. Having a persistent identity is
more important than having one brought in from the physical
world.
Presence | Presence is awareness of sharing the same
space, and this is implemented as seeing when your friends are online,
or busy. AIM isn't particularly good at group presence and visibility
of communication, although other chat systems (such as IRC and early
Talkers) use the concept of "rooms" and whispers.
Relationships | AIM lets you add people as buddies. From that
moment, their presence is visible on your screen. This is a
relationship, you're allowed them to have an effect on your
environment. Not terribly nuanced however.
Conversations |
Conversations are implemented as synchronous messaging. There's a
difference between messaging and conversations. Messaging is just an
exchange of text with no obligation, but conversations have their own
presence and want to be continued. AIM does this by having a window
for a conversation. It's difficult to drift out of it, it hangs there,
requesting you continue. Contrast this with email which often is just
messaging, and conversations die easily.
Groups | AIM isn't
great at groups. Although you can have group chats, the group is
transient. People have more loyalty to a group when there's some kind
of joining step, when they've made some investment in it. Entering a
window just doesn't do that, and there's no property of the group that
exists outside the individual user's accounts.
Reputation |
Reputation is used more in systems which allow meeting new
individuals. AIM's simple version of this is "warning". Any user may
"warn" any other user. A users total "warn" level (a figure up to 100)
is shown to everyone they communicate with. Unfortunately, it's not a
trustworthy reputation system, and reputation is notoriously difficult
-- but humans are great at dealing with it themselves, given certain
affordances: persistence identities, and being able to discuss those
identities with other people. AIM's simplistic relationship system
makes reputation not so important though.
Sharing | People like
to share. With AIM, sharing is often as simple as giving a friend a
link to follow. Other systems, such as Flikr, are about sharing
photographs. These act as small transactions that build genuine group
feeling."
Curious what our Drupal development community thinks
about these 7 components (as pivotal/needed) to the Drupal project.
Thoughts/discussion? Thanks. [MapTheWay]
Roleplaying in social software
Roleplaying in social software
01/07/2004 05:12 PMThis post is why I like danah boyd so much. She not only
is smart as a whip (as they say) but she writes about rocks!
roleplayi
ng in social software.
Roleplaying in social software is not contained to just Friendster.
I remember being quite humored to find that both Saddam and Dubya had
LiveJournals during their tiff. This morning, i got a note from a
fellow researcher, Anindita Basu,
responding to my postings of Live Journal statistics:
oh, reminds me-- i meant to respond to your post about lj
stats. i'm not sure about this, but i don't think they're taking
roleplayers into account in their stats, and they're (or rather we're)
probably throwing numbers off. that's what i'm looking at now,
research-wise. blog-based roleplaying. communities appropriating
online technologies to co-construct stories. there are a lot of young
teenage girls who've set up blogs as harry potter characters, for
instance, saying they were born on july 31, 1980 like harry potter and
live in the UK. so male/female numbers are off as well as ages and
locations. besides the whole harry potter community, there are a bunch
of others, including buffy, lord of the rings and even pop icon based
ones. i'm not sure how many are out there, if the numbers are
significant enough to skew their stats out of their million users, but
it's something to take note of.
I have *no* idea how many roleplayers exist within the world of LJ,
but i'd bet that it's no small number. Yet, all too often, these
subcultures go unnoticed by the larger tech world. This behavior is
quite reminiscent of that vast community of fan fiction and slash
fans. When i started working with Henry Jenkins,
i was astonished to hear how many people produced fan fiction online.
For those who don't know what fan fiction/slash are, imagine watching
a TV show (like Buffy) and then writing back stories about what is
really happening behind the scenes. Using the characters from the
show, people would produce thousands of subplots, stories of the
characters when they were younger/older, etc. Slash is a particular
subform of fan fiction where underlying homoerotic/sexual subplots are
revealed. Before the net, people were using zines to write fan
fiction. Now, fan fiction writers from all over the world are
connected via the Internet.
Fan fiction is a fascinating form of participation in media
consumption. The audience participates on a deeper level, engaging
with the characters and building a community of like-minded folks who
help each other with writing, personal struggles, etc. Not
suprisingly, quite a lot of fan fiction is created by individuals
trying to work out their own demons.
Of course, here's where the lawyers have a field day (oh, Creative Commons...). The first
issue is not surprising... Some have charged that this reappropriation
of characters violates copyright/trademark. But, here's a beaut...
Often, teens are using fan fiction to explore their sexuality. When
14-year olds write fiction about sex, is it child porn? Even worse,
when 14-year olds write about imagined sexual encounters with teachers
(i.e. in the context of Harry Potter), is it pedophelia? Henry is
having a field day looking into these claims. But it certainly puts a
nice twist into the process.
Btw, for those who find this topic fascinating, definitely read Textual Poachers by Henry Jenkins. Oh, and
Henry blogs in collection at Technology
Review.
[
zephoria]
Ideas for Social Software
Ideas for Social Software
12/31/2003 09:38 AMSeconding Liz's linking to Matt Haughey's ideas for useful social
software. Matt suggests "Epinions + Friendster," which sounds a lot
like a company that Paul English, Rick Levine and I tried to start a
few years ago. Matt puts the problem well: Last summer I moved to a
town in a place far away from where I've spent the past few years, and
one of the first problems I had to solve was finding the perfect
everything. I quickly amassed a bunch of questions that took months of
trial and error to answer through a network of new friends and...
Does social software matter?
Does social software matter?
01/04/2004 10:51 AMI've posted an entry at Corante Many2Many on whether social networks
such as LinkedIn matter......
Lycos does some me-too social software
Lycos does some me-too social software
02/11/2004 07:01 PMDo you accept Anil as your Lycoster?
Aesthetics of Social Software
Aesthetics of Social Software
01/07/2004 05:10 PMAdina on
Esthetics of Social Software [Weblogsky]
Adina on Esthetics of Social Software
Adina Levin posted a note about the discussions between Honoria and
I re. esthetics of social networks and software. Adina notes some
criteria. Honoria and I have been looking at three aspects of the
subject:
- social networks that form for esthetic purposes (e.g. mail art and
network art)
- esthetics represented in the visualization of social networks
- an esthetic of social experience (e.g. harmonious and productive
group-forming)
Honoria and I are assembling a panel on the subject for South by Southwest Interactive, along with danah boyd and Molly Wright Steenson. [Link to
Adina's comments]
Here are Adina's comments:
Jon Lebkowsky and Honoria have an interesting insight about evaluating
social software according to esthetic, leading to some reflection
about the criteria for an esthetic of social software.
Thinking out loud, here are some criteria to consider...
* ease of groupforming
* intimacy gradient -- ability to create
spaces on a continuum from public to private
* expressiveness --
ability for individuals and groups to express mood and style
*
shared memory -- the social software equivalent of bookshelves and
mantelpiece photos
* attractive front porches -- social public
areas preceding private spaces
* helpful navigation -- clear
signage, or meditative exploration
I'm on vacation, so I don't have Christopher Alexander near to hand; that would
bring some good insight.
Here's Marc's comments.....
As the rush towards dating, business and jobs has raised the
attention level of social software, I often try to factor in the
importance of personal publishing, micro-content and aesthetics in
general. I have to remind myself that we called it "creativity
software" before it was called "multimedia".
Now we are in the midst of the 'next big thing' - yet everyone
(except for Jon, Honoria and adina apparently) is focused on the all
mighty buck, rather than what makes the world a beautiful place.
YES..... in addition to the points made in the two lists above,
I'll add:
- the face, the human face, the MOST beautiful
thing around
- the act of identity browsing - cruising not
after some fact, info bit or meme - but simply because you're
interested in that person
- the kind of interaction, group forming, spontaneous combustion,
pivot forming, game the system - on the fly -
improvisation we saw with Fakesters, Tribe Tribes, etc.
- and soon some pretty sexy zoom up into to someone's face -
even larger (made possible by Laszlo)
- and even sooner - the kind of group voice that
the AlwaysOn Network will
have (and Ecademy has had for a while)
Blogs, Wkis and Social Software
Blogs, Wkis and Social Software
06/06/2005 12:13 AMSome friends asked me why we weren't mentioned in this article in CNet. I
guess I have to go schmooze up the writer - Josuhua Jaffe.
But I wonder - why Joshua didn't mention 1Up, Tribe or aSmallWorld
or Yahoo 360? He also didn't mention LinkedIn, MySpace or hi5. I
guess there's allot going on - and the focus of this article is on
corporatioons doing work - not individuals finding jobs or having
fun.
But one thing it implies - is that the COMBINATION of blogging with
something else! Perhaps now folks will see that it's time to
move beyond thinking of blogging as some stand alone activity and see
it as a natural form of expression and feature - that then gets
applied to EVERY kind of activity.
This is at the essence of DLAs. An integrated, aggregated and
highly customizable experience that combines social networking,
blogging, media and communications with whatever the focus
constituency, company assets, positioning or approach calls for. Oh
yah - and mobile too (thanks Russ!)
We've been getting allot of great reception from our DLAs ideas - so
we'll have plenty of examples to show and talk about in the near
future.
Final note: I can't wait to see what 6A comes up with - and what
Micahel Sippey is all about.
Berkman Audio on Social Software
Berkman Audio on Social Software
04/09/2004 04:12 PMHarvard's Berkman Center's Mary Bridges and friends have put together
an 8 minute audio report, from the SXSW conference, on social
software....
Social Software needs to show the seams
Social Software needs to show the seams
04/20/2004 10:07 PMAlthough I think the "socially awkward" and the "what's the point"
problem of some social networking sites is a problem, I think the
"suck up your email addresses from outlook" and the one click "spam
all of my friends" features are the most troublesome. Stowe Boyd
talks about his accidental "spam my friends with one click"
episode with Zero
Degrees.
Actually, what I find scarier is the way Spoke which takes all of
your email address from your headers and makes a network out of them.
So even if you don't "join" Spoke, if someone who you exchange email
with joins, you're actually already in Spoke.
I think the key is user control and a clear interface of what is
happening. I think UI used to be a lot about making things "seamless".
I think when you are dealing with sensitive privacy related
information, your UI has to make it very clear where your data is,
when it is going to be transfered to another machine, and what the
privacy policy of the said machine is. Every time data moves across a
boundary, the user should know this an be provided a choice. UI's that
deal with personal information should be about showing the seams, not
being seamless.
Ross and Ju
dith also chime in.
Is Social Software Bad for the Dean
Camapign?
Is Social Software Bad for the Dean
Camapign?
01/26/2004 10:59 PM
I'm getting the same cognitive dissonance listening to political
handicappers explain Dean's dismal showing in Iowa that I used to get
listening to financial analysts try to explain dot com mania with
things like P/E ratios and EBITDA. A stock's value is not set by those
things; it is set by buyer and seller agreeing on price. In ordinary
markets, buyers and sellers use financial details to get to that
price, but sometimes, as with dot com stocks, the way prices get
agreed on has nothing to do with finance.
In the same way, talking about Dean's third-place showing in terms of
'momentum' and 'character', the P/E and EBITDA of campaigns, may miss
the point. Dean did poorly because not enough people voted for him,
and the usual explanations -- potential voters changed their minds
because of his character or whatever -- seem inadequate to explain the
Iowa results. What I wonder is whether Dean has accidentally created a
movement (where what counts is believing) instead of a campaign (where
what counts is voting.)
And (if that's true) I wonder if his use of social software helped
create that problem.
- More at
http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2004/01/26/is_social_software_bad
_for_the_dean_campaign.php
Gender, personality, and social software
Gender, personality, and social software
02/17/2004 11:56 AM
"I feel like I'm at a Microsoft monastery here," wrote Rory Blyth from
the most recent Professional Developers Conference. "I think I've seen
about 2.5 females ... it's like they're an endangered species." The
observation holds equally true for open source conferences.
...
If we expect social software to help rewrite the productivity
equation, social skills and protocols become critical parts of the
game. How can social software succeed if, in its development, half the
population is so poorly represented? [Full story at
InfoWorld.com]
This column touches on two third-rail issues: personality and gender.
The
Wired
article on Asperger's syndrome cited in the column was incorrectly
dated, by the way. My error: it was of course published in 2001, not
1991. That slipped past me and my editors, but my friend
Larry Welkowitz, a
psychologist and AS specialist, caught it.
...An addendum to a definition of Social
Software
An addendum to a definition of Social
Software
01/05/2005 08:45 AMI'm loath to wake the old evil beastie of definitions of social
software, but I came across some old notes that I sent off to someone
in October and I'd like to keep track of it for later. Basically the
question was could you produce a short and pithy, mostly accurate
short-hand description of social software that mostly worked. I came
up with:
Social Software can be loosely defined as software which
supports, extends, or derives added value from, human social behaviour
- message-boards, musical taste-sharing, photo-sharing, instant
messaging, mailing lists, social networking.
I slapped a lot of examples in there because it seemed to clarify
the issue a bit. Note, this is a shorthand, and nothing more - my
fuller posts on the subject include: My working definition of social
software but I think maybe I prefer this shorter, rotted-down and
composted version.
Read the comments
Blog aggregator and social software
Blog aggregator and social software
02/05/2005 09:53 PMPito talks about the way the blog aggregator he's building,
BlogBridge, has some tagging and social software capabilities.
(BlogBridge, even in its current state of development - alpha - has
become my regular aggregator. Disclosure: I'm on its board of
advisors.)...
Social Software and the Politics of
Groups
Social Software and the Politics of
Groups
01/07/2004 02:56 PM
Social software, software that supports group communications, includes
everything from the simple CC: line in email to vast 3D game worlds
like EverQuest, and it can be as undirected as a chat room, or as
task-oriented as a wiki (a collaborative workspace). Because there
are so many patterns of group interaction, social software is a much
larger category than things like groupware or online communities --
though it includes those things, not all group communication is
business-focused or communal. One of the few commonalities in this
big category is that social software is unique to the internet in a
way that software for broadcast or personal communications are not.
- More at http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_politics.html
Many-to-Many: Is Social Software Bad for
the Dean Campaign?
Many-to-Many: Is Social Software Bad for
the Dean Campaign?
01/28/2004 10:18 AMIs Social Software Bad for the Dean Campaign? .. Did Dean create a
campaign or a movement? .. posts his occasional think piece .. Clay
Shirky wonders .. many-to
many
corante.com/many/archives/2004/01/26/is_social_software_bad_for
_the_dean_campaign.php
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The Social Software Patent Mess
The Social Software Patent Mess
11/12/2003 01:34 PMNot sure what it is with silly patent messes this evening, but they're
popping up in every other story. The latest one details some of the
pendi
ng patent fights likely to happen in the tremendously overhyped social
software world. There's been a lot of inbreeding within the
social software world with a number of the early players all investing
in each other. Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus, for example, were both
early investors in Friendster - and then went on to create their own
social networking services that targeted different markets. However,
now that the venture capitalists have swooped in, the fear of a patent
battle is increasing. Jonathan Abrams of Friendster raised some
eyebrows a few months back when reporters asked him about business
models and he started ranting on and on about the patents they planned
to get. So now, Hoffman and Pincus have teamed up (without Abrams) to
buy the old patent that SixDegrees had many years ago. They're
basically hoping to use it as a defensive tactic against any patents
Friendster gets. I'm still wondering just what's so innovative about
any of these services that deserves a patent, but that's a different
debate. The article has plenty of details about what's happening, but
all I could think while reading this was that this focus on patents,
rather than actual innovation, business models or customers suggests
some of these services are already on the downswing. The "space"
itself hasn't even figured out a revenue model and new sites are
showing up every day - and the focus is on who gets the patents? It
has all the makings of a nice little infighting battle where all these
companies drag each other down.
Moible social software applications
Moible social software applications
07/28/2004 02:53 PMFrom Clay
Shirky via ElasticSpace.......
Coolio list.....
Mobile social software privacy
Mobile social software privacy
08/04/2004 01:47 PMI wrote a piece for TheFeature.com about UC Berkeley Professor John
Canny's work on designing privacy systems for mobile social software
(MoSoSo) networks.
Another method takes advantage of "the natural incentives
that occur in peer communities, as manifest in things like Napster and
Gnutella," says Canny. "It does seem within a community you have a few
altruistic people who will, for whatever reason, help the community by
providing the service, and from a privacy perspective you can do a lot
if you can identify some users who are willing to leave a machine
online that provides some privacy protection. The rest of the people
in the community can use that machine. They don't have to trust the
owner of the machine because the algorithm is set up so that the owner
of that machine can't get access to that machine anyway, but if they
provide this service, they can protect their peers' information from
the service provider."
Linkplasticbag.org | webl0g | Social
Software for Set-Top boxes...
plasticbag.org | webl0g | Social
Software for Set-Top boxes...
03/24/2005 08:43 AMSocial Software for Set-Top boxes ..
genius
plasticbag.org/archives/2005/03/social_software_for_settop_bo
xes.shtml
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Google launches social software tool
Google launches social software tool
01/26/2004 02:21 AM
Google, the world's leading search engine, has
quietly released a social
software application. Orkut
is invitation-only, and represents a potentially significant intervention within
that new, burgeoning field.
(via OLDaily )
"plasticbag.org | webl0g | Social
Software for Set-Top boxes..."
"plasticbag.org | webl0g | Social
Software for Set-Top boxes..."
03/27/2005 04:51 AMBEDD Mobile Social Software: Obviously
Has Been to Singapore
BEDD Mobile Social Software: Obviously
Has Been to Singapore
06/09/2004 10:57 AM
It's just in Singapore now,
but there's another social mobile networking service now called BEDD
that uses Bluetooth/SMS/MMS/IM or email to connect people when they
are physically close by. It's orients around phone-to-phone
connections, too, which means its pretty much limited to the range of
your phone's Bluetooth receiver, but they have a large range of
services, including dating, eBay-like auctioning, buddies, software
distribution, and more. Actually, the more I look at this, the more
I'm noticing this service has been out for a while (on Series 60s
phones, at least), although they just had their official 'big launch.'
I guess the news is that they're aiming to roll out to the rest of
Asia, Europe, and the Americas soon.
I'm not too big on the Bluetooth-based mobile social softwares, not
because I don't like the concepts, but just because Bluetooth has such
a short range. Even here in New York you'd have to be on the same side
of the block for this to be useful; I can only imagine how
infrequently you'd hook up with someone in a less densely packed city.
I need a GPS-enabled phone sending my location to a central server,
with user-definable ranges of intersection. And a pony.
Rea
d [HardwareZone via AdMBlo
g]
Social Software ideas A Whole Lotta
Features
Social Software ideas A Whole Lotta
Features
12/31/2003 05:00 AMfolks
a.wholelottanothing.org/features.blah/entry/007633
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K-Logs: How Social Networking Software
Helps and Where it Doesn't
K-Logs: How Social Networking Software
Helps and Where it Doesn't
01/07/2004 06:25 PMM2M. David Weinberger critiques social
networking software (rightly).My take:
There isn't
any magic in social networking software. The value this
software provides is much more basic than many people think.
Here's what it provides:
- It contains solid (but private) contact information on all
members.
- Profiles are available on each member (on LinkedIn you can put in a
resume).
- There is a safe, formal method of requesting contact with other
members you don't know. This is like UserLand's spam
free e-mail.
- The connection info (you know D through B and C) is more of a
gimmick than something that provides real
value. There is a small amount of comfort involved in knowing
how you are connected to other people (you can also get info on how
many people they are connected to, which is like a PageRank for social
networks). This is the part of these networks that confuses everyone.
- There is a search function for finding other members based on
information in the profile (interests, company, job title,
etc).
Now that we have demystified social networking software, let's
think about how to apply the features in an open system that works in
conjunction with weblogs. The current systems are too closed and
limited to be of much long term value. Here's my thinking:
- Solid information on weblog authors. It
would be great to have standardized weblog profile and contact
information. Currently, contact and profile information on
weblogs, if it is there at all, is all over the
map. It really sucks. Sure, you can read what someone
is writing on their weblog, but you often need ESP to determine who
they are, what they do, etc.
- A safe way to share contact information.
Way too many people publish their e-mail address in the clear on the
their weblogs. There should be a way to restrict that (via a
spam free e-mail feature) that would allow the weblog's author to
release solid contact information (e-mail, phone, address) to readers
that they authorize.
- Search!! This is a simple and powerful
feature. Want to find Microsoft or Google webloggers?
Why wait for someone to build a list that may or may not be out of
date? A search function on social networking profile
information derived from weblogs would solve this quickly and
with much more accuracy than a random Google search.
- Categorization. Have a look at Jon Udell's lists of CXO
webloggers on the right hand side of his weblog. How easy would this
be to create if you had solid contact information contained in a
social networking system. In fact, you could build directories
on the fly customized to your needs based on good profile
information.
- Community and portability. The advent of
open profile information would allow people to create custom
communities. There is a lot of power in creating ad hoc
communities of members using this type of information. It could
also be used to allow members of that community to build contact lists
in other applications (e-mail and IM) that are constantly and
automatically updated (a new role for Newsgator -- creating auto
updated contact lists for e-mail apps).
OK, this would be very, very easy to do in the weblog world if
we start right now. All that is needed is a simple standard
for an XML profile (as simple as RSS -- which only Dave seems able to build)
that can be published by weblog authors in a form on their weblog tool
of choice. If the vendors (UserLand, Blogger, and SixApart) did
this, within weeks sites like Feedster and Technorati would have tools that
took advantage of that information. This would then usher in a
whole new deluge of innovation similar to what we are seeing in RSS
today. Let's put Friendster out of business and open this up.
Found objects: Social Software
Mind-map...
Found objects: Social Software
Mind-map...
10/29/2003 12:10 AMI've not got an awful lot to say about this this fantastically
interesting mind-map of social software, but I think it's slightly
too important and interesting to be left loitering in the linklog.
Social networking software continues to
grow
Social networking software continues to
grow
12/02/2003 03:08 AM
Social software, applications which enhance human collaboration,
continue to spur new software . Projects including Friendster , Tribe.net , Ryze , and
Eliyon are populating and connecting users into social networks . FOAF develops a standard for
networking, while
Microsoft is considering a
move in this area.
The popularity and perceived efficacy of social software is
perhaps part of a patent drive to claim the six degrees of
separation as intellectual property , or small
world theory, which supports many of these collaboration engines.
This interdisciplinary theory, perhaps most powerfully developed in
social network analysis
, has been applied to a variety of fields, including
internet structure and security .
(thanks to Clara Yu!)
O'Reilly ETech: Social Software Showdown
O'Reilly ETech: Social Software Showdown
02/10/2004 02:53 AMThe O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference kicks off Monday, and the
rising field of social software looks to take center stage. If you
thought peer-to-peer and groupware are dead, think again. They're back
in a big way.
Shwirz of Gazm.org back on social
software
Shwirz of Gazm.org back on social
software
07/05/2004 11:26 AMJacob Shwirz, formerly of gazm.org (an interesting experiment in
social commenting sorta), is back blogging about things social: Well,
after spending 6 months getting settled into a new life in Israel I'd
like to get back into talking about the fascinating topic of the
Internet as a social medium and its potential to bring people (friends
and strangers) together. My interest in this area has never waned but
now I'd like to be more proactive and not have this blog be just about
my immigration to Israel....
Preamble towards a post on Social
Software for Set-top boxes
Preamble towards a post on Social
Software for Set-top boxes
03/23/2005 07:59 PMThe following post contains some of my thoughts about Social
Software for Set-Top Boxes. But before I do so, I thought maybe I
should write really briefly about some of the context. I've been
thinking around this stuff for a very long time now, but I've been too
disorganised and busy to put any of it out in public. The last thing I
wrote around this area was several months ago, and was in fact
entirely an attempt to set the scene a little for what I'm going to
write next. It was about conceptualising how a connected media hub
might operate in the home. For more background on that, you should
read the three posts I wrote back then, the last of which has enough
pictures to give a sense of the whole concept without the effort of
ploughing through my clumsy inarticulate prose:
I started writing this post and the following post immediately
after producing the pieces above, and the illustrations and design
work you'll see were well on their way before Christmas. I decided to
postpone publishing it for a variety of reasons, including the fact
that I felt it had a certain amount of synergy with the paper that Matt Webb and I were
going to be presenting at ETCon with Paul and Matt Biddulph on "Reinventing
Radio". But with that paper now out of the way (and available here: Reinventing
Radio: Enhancing One-to-Many with Many-to-Many) I think it's
probably the right time to launch into it. So with no further ado: Social Software for Set-Top Boxes.
Read the
comments
New Spray Impacts Perception - Takes
Six Years Off a Woman’s Age
New Spray Impacts Perception - Takes
Six Years Off a Woman’s Age
06/17/2005 04:02 PMThis sounds phony to me, but there may be something to it, so read
on: Alan R. Hirsch, M.D., director of the Smell & Taste Treatment and
Research Foundation, created Timeless View based on more than 25 years
of research on human sensory function. He recently presented a study
on Timeless View to the American Psychiatric Association’s Annual
Meeting in Atlanta, which illustrated how his patent-pending blend of
scents (which includes pink grapefruit and others),…
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Grok Description matches for The Social Impacts of Software Choices
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The Social Impacts of Software Choices
