Social software refers to applications which facilitate virtual connection and collaboration between people on a network. It is sometimes described succinctly as "connection comes before content."

The term came into more common usage in late 2002, largely due to Clay Shirky who organized a "Social Software Summit" in November 2002, having started to use the term in April 2002. Shirky defines social software as "stuff that gets spammed." [1]

Contents

1 Examples 1.1 Internet Relay Chat 1.2 Internet Forum 1.3 Blogs or Weblogs 1.4 Wiki 1.5 Social networks 1.6 Social bookmarking 2 See also 3 External links 3.1 Commercial Software

Examples

Internet Relay Chat

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.

Internet Forum

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, freerepublic.com.

Blogs or Weblogs

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 and weblogs: a history and perspective.

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 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

Wiki

Examples include the original Portland Pattern Repository wiki, MeatballWiki, CommunityWiki , and possibly Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource. The status of Wikipedia and related projects as "true" Wikis or as "typical" wikis has been questioned. [2]

Social networks

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, Linkedin, Freecycle and 24eyes.

See also: Category:Social networking

Social bookmarking

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 and Simpy.

See also

• Debian
• Usenet
• Wikipedia's implied constitution
• Folksonomy
• Wiki software

External links

• A Group is its Own Worst Enemy and Social Software and the Politics of Groups by Clay Shirky. Published on the "Networks, Economics, and Culture" mailing list.
• Social literacies: Some observations about writing and wikis by Ulises Ali Mejias
• Many-to-Many: a group weblog on Social Software
• Social Software Alliance: Wiki on Social Software taskforces
• Social Protocols: An Introduction
• James Seng's paper on Social Software
• Tracing the Evolution of Social Software

Commercial Software

• Socialtext Enterprise Social Software
• Groove
• IBM's Lotus
• K-Collector Enterprise Knowledge Aggregator
• The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online