Social software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Social software encompasses a range of software systems that allow users to interact and share data.
This computer-mediated communication has become very popular with social sites like MySpace,
Facebook and Bebo, media sites like Flickr and YouTube as well as commercial sites like Amazon.com
and eBay. Many of these applications share characteristics like open APIs, service-oriented design and
the ability to upload data and media. The terms Web 2.0 and (for large-business applications)
Enterprise 2.0 are also used to describe this style of software.

The more specific terms collaborative software and groupware are usually applied narrowly to
software that enables collaborative work. Distinctions among usage of the terms "social", "trusted" and
"collaborative" are in the applications or uses, not the tools themselves, although some tools are used
only rarely for collaborative work.

Contents
1 Kinds of tools for online communication
1.1 Instant Messaging
1.2 Text chat
1.3 Internet forums
1.4 Wikis
1.5 Blogs
1.6 Collaborative real-time editors
1.7 Prediction markets
1.8 Social network services
1.9 Social network search engines
1.10 Deliberative social networks
1.11 Commercial social networks
1.12 Social guides
1.13 Social bookmarking
1.14 Social viewing
1.15 Social cataloging
1.16 Social libraries
1.17 Social online storage
1.18 Virtual worlds
1.18.1 Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs)
1.18.2 Non-game worlds
1.18.3 Economies
1.19 Other specialized social applications
1.20 Social software vendor lists
1.21 Comparison of communication and interactive tools
2 Emerging technologies
2.1 Peer-to-peer social networks
2.2 Virtual presence
3 Debates or design choices
4 Theory
 5 History
5.1 Dale McCuaig
6 Criticism
6.1 Exponential generation of resource consuming negative externalities
6.1.1 Social Networking in a work environment
6.2 Information overload and arbitrary filtering of communication
6.3 Downsides of ubiquitous social networking
6.3.1 Cyberbullying
6.3.2 Groupthink and Conformity
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
10 External links

Kinds of tools for online communication

Social software applications include communication tools and interactive tools. Communication tools
typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but
increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a
pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users,
facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk.

Instant Messaging
Main article: Instant messaging

An instant messaging application or client allows one to communicate with another person over a
network in real time, in relative privacy. Popular, consumer-oriented clients include AOL Instant
Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, Meebo, MSN Messenger, Pidgin (formerly Gaim), Skype and Yahoo!
Messenger. Instant messaging software designed for use in business includes IBM Lotus Sametime,
XMPP and Microsoft Messenger.

One can add friends to a contact or "buddy" list by entering the person's email address or messenger
ID. If the person is online, their name will typically be listed as available for chat. Clicking on their
name will activate a chat window with space to write to the other person, as well as read their reply.

Text chat
Main article: Text chat

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and other online chat technologies allow users to join chat rooms and
communicate with many people at once, publicly. Users may join a pre-existing chat room or create a
new one about any topic. Once inside, you may type messages that everyone else in the room can read,
as well as respond to messages from others. Often there is a steady stream of people entering and
leaving. Whether you are in another person's chat room or one you've created yourself, you are
generally free to invite others online to join you in that room. Instant messaging facilitates both one-to-
one (communication) and many-to-many interaction.

Internet forums
 Main article: Internet forum

Originally modeled after the real-world paradigm of electronic bulletin boards of the world before
internet was born, 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. Most forums are
public, allowing anybody to sign up at any time. A few are private, gated communities where new
members must pay a small fee to join, like the Something Awful Forums.

Forums can contain many different categories in a hierarchy according to topics and subtopics. Other
features include the ability to post images or files or to quote another user's post with special formatting
in one's own post. Forums often grow in popularity until they can boast several thousand members
posting replies to tens of thousands of topics continuously.

There are various standards and claimants for the market leaders of each software category. Various
add-ons may be available, including translation and spelling correction software, depending on the
expertise of the operators of the bulletin board. In some industry areas, the bulletin board has its own
commercially successful achievements: free and paid hardcopy magazines as well as professional and
amateur sites.

Current successful services have combined new tools with the older newsgroup and mailing list
paradigm to produce hybrids like Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups. Also as a service catches on, it
tends to adopt characteristics and tools of other services that compete. Over time, for example, wiki
user pages have become social portals for individual users and may be used in place of other portal
applications.

Wikis
Main article: Wikis

A wikb page whose content can be edited by its visitors. Examples include Wikipedia, Wiktionary, the
original Portland Pattern Repository wiki, MeatballWiki, CommunityWiki and Wikisource. For more
detail on free and commercially available wiki systems see Comparison of wiki software.

Blogs
Main article: Blog

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, views on
politics or a particular subject important to them.

Blogs mean many things to different people, ranging from "online journal" to "easily updated personal
website." While these definitions are technically correct, they fail to capture the power of blogs as
social software. Beyond being a simple homepage or an online diary, some blogs allow comments on
the entries, thereby creating a discussion forum. They also have blogrolls (i.e. links to other blogs
which the owner reads or admires) and indicate their social relationship to those other bloggers using
the XFN social relationship standard. Pingback and trackback allow one blog to notify another blog,
creating an inter-blog conversation. Blogs engage readers and can build a virtual community around a
particular person or interest. Examples include Slashdot, LiveJournal, BlogSpot. Blogging has also
become fashionable in business settings by companies who use software such as IBM Lotus
Connections.
Collaborative real-time editors
Main article: Collaborative real-time editor

Simultaneous editing of a text or media file by different participants on a network was first
demonstrated on research systems as early as the 1970s, but is now practical on a global network.
SubEthaEdit, SynchroEdit, ACE and Moonedit are examples of this type of social software. Google
Docs & Spreadsheets and Zoho allow joint editing, but other users will only see changes after saving.
Etherpad is a very promising platform, that has been open sourced.

Prediction markets
Main article: Prediction market

Many prediction market tools have become available (including some free software) that make it easy
to predict and bet on future events. This a more formal version of social interaction, although it
qualifies as a robust type of social software.

Social network services

Main article: Social network service

Social network services allow people to come together online around shared interests, hobbies or
causes. For example, some sites provide dating services where users post personal profiles, locations,
ages, gender, etc. and are able to search for a partner. Other services enable business networking (Ryze,
XING and LinkedIn) and social event meetups (Meetup).

Some large wikis have effectively become social network services by encouraging user pages and
portals.

Anyone can create their own social networking service using hosted offerings like Ning, grou.ps or
rSitez or more flexible, installable software like Elgg, Jcow, BuddyPress, SocialEngine, phpFox,
Status.net or Concursive's ConcourseConnect.

Social network search engines

Social network search engines are a class of search engines that use social networks to organize,
prioritize or filter search results. There are two subclasses of social network search engines: those that
use explicit social networks and those that use implicit social networks.

Explicit social network search engines allow people to find each other according to explicitly
stated social relationships such as XFN social relationships. XHTML Friends Network, for
example, allows people to share their relationships on their own sites, thus forming a
decentralized/distributed online social network, in contrast to centralized social network services
listed in the previous section.
Implicit social network search engines allow people to filter search results based upon classes of
social networks they trust, such as a shared political viewpoint. This was called an epistemic
filter in the 1993 "State of the Future Report" from the American Committee for the United
Nations University which predicted that this would become the dominant means of search for
most users.

Lacking trustworthy explicit information about such viewpoints, this type of social network search
engine mines the web to infer the topology of online social networks. For example, the NewsTrove
search engine infers social networks from content - sites, blogs, pods and feeds - by examining, among
other things, subject matter, link relationships and grammatical features to infer social networks.

Deliberative social networks

Deliberative social networks are webs of discussion and debate for decision-making purposes. They are
built for the purpose of establishing sustained relationships between individuals and their government.
They rely upon informed opinion and advice that is given with a clear expectation of outcomes.

Commercial social networks

Commercial social networks are designed to support business transaction and to build a trust between
an individual and a brand, which relies on opinion of product, ideas to make the product better,
enabling customers to participate with the brands in promoting development, service delivery and a
better customer experience. [citation needed] . An example of these networks is Dell IdeaStorm.

Social guides
A social guide recommending places to visit or contains information about places in the real world such
as coffee shops, restaurants and wifi hotspots, etc. One such application is wikitravel.

Social bookmarking
Main article: Social bookmarking
Main article: Enterprise bookmarking

Some web sites allow users to post their list of bookmarks or favorites websites for others to search and
view them. These sites can also be used to meet others sharing common interests. Examples include
digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, reddit, and furl.

Enterprise bookmarking is a method of tagging and linking any information using an expanded set of
tags to capture knowledge about data.[1] It collects and indexes these tags in a web-infrastructure server
residing behind the firewall. Users can share knowledge tags with specified people or groups, shared
only inside specific networks, typically within an organization. Examples of this software are
Knowledge Plaza, Jumper 2.0, IBM Dogear, and Connectbeam.

Social viewing
Social viewing allows multiple users to aggregate from multiple sources and view online videos
together in a synchronized viewing experience.

Social cataloging
In Social cataloging much like social bookmarking, this software is aimed towards academics. It allows
the user to post a citation for an article found on the internet or a website, online database like
Academic Search Premier or LexisNexis Academic University, a book found in a library catalog and so
on. These citations can be organized into predefined categories or a new category defined by the user
through the use of tags. This allows academics researching or interested in similar areas to connect and
share resources.

Social libraries
This applications allows visitors to keep track of their collectibles, books, records and DVDs. Users can
share their collections. Recommendations can be generated based on user ratings, using statistical
computation and network theory. Some sites offer a buddy system, as well as virtual "check outs" of
items for borrowing among friends. Folksonomy or tagging is implemented on most of these sites.

Social online storage

Social online storage applications allow their users to collaboratively create file archives containing
files of any type. Files can either be edited online or from a local computer which has access to the
storage system. Such systems can be built upon existing server infrastructure (e.g. GDrive) or leverage
idle resources by applying P2P technology (e.g. Wuala). Such systems are social because they allow
public file distribution and direct file sharing with friends.

Virtual worlds
Main article: Virtual world

Virtual Worlds are services where it is possible to meet and interact with other people in a virtual
environment reminiscent of the real world. Thus the term virtual reality. Typically, the user manipulates
an avatar through the world, interacting with others using chat or voice chat.

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs)

Main article: Massively Multiplayer Online Games

MMOGs are virtual worlds (also known as virtual environments) that add various sorts of point
systems, levels, competition and winners and losers to virtual world simulation. Commercial MMOGs
(or, more accurately, massively multiplayer online role-playing games or MMORPGs,) include
Everquest and World of Warcraft.

Non-game worlds

Another development are the worlds that are less game-like or not games at all. Games have points,
winners and losers. Instead, some virtual worlds are more like social networking services like MySpace
and Facebook, but with 3D simulation features. Examples include Second Life, ActiveWorlds, The
Sims Online and There.

Economies

Very often a real economy emerges in these worlds, extending the non-physical service economy within
the world to service providers in the real world. Experts can design dresses or hairstyles for characters,
go on routine missions for them and so on, and be paid in game money to do so. This emergence has
resulted in expanding social possibility and also in increased incentives to cheat. In the case of Second
Life, the in-world economy is one of the primary features of the world. Some MMOG companies even
have economists employed full-time (for example, CCP Games with Eve Online) to monitor their in-
game economic systems.

Other specialized social applications

There are many other applications with social software characteristics that facilitate human connection
and collaboration in specific contexts. Project management and e-learning applications are among
these.

Social software vendor lists

Various analyst firms have attempted to list and categorize the major social software vendors in the
marketplace. Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research has listed fifty "community software"
platforms. [2] Independent analyst firm CMS Watch has categorized what it calls "the 30 most
significant" Social Software vendors, which it evaluates head-to-head. [3]

Comparison of communication and interactive tools

Communication tools are generally asynchronous. By contrast, interactive tools are generally
synchronous, allowing users to communicate in real time (phone, net phone, video chat) or near-
synchronous (IM, text chat).

Communication involve the content of talk, speech or writing, whereas interaction involves the interest
users establish in one another as individuals. In other words, a communication tool may want to make
access and searching of text both simple and powerful. An interactive tool may want to present as much
of a user's expression, performance and presence as possible. The organization of texts and providing
access to archived contributions differs from the facilitation of interpersonal interactions between
contributors enough to warrant the distinction in media. [citation needed]

Emerging technologies
Emerging technological capabilities to more widely distribute hosting and support much higher
bandwidth in real time are bypassing central content arbiters in some cases.[citation needed]

Peer-to-peer social networks

A hybrid of web-based social networks, instant messaging technologies and peer-to-peer connectivity
and file sharing, peer-to-peer social networks generally allow users to share blogs, files (especially
photographs) and instant messages. Some examples are imeem, SpinXpress, Bouillon, Wirehog and
Soulseek. Also, Groove, Collanos, WiredReach and Kerika have similar functionality, but with more of
a work-based, collaboration bias.

Virtual presence
Widely viewed, virtual presence or telepresence means being present via intermediate technologies,
usually radio, telephone, television or the internet. In addition, it can denote apparent physical
appearance, such as voice, face and body language.

More narrowly, the term virtual presence denotes presence on World Wide Web locations which are
identified by URLs. People who are browsing a web site are considered to be virtually present at web
locations. Virtual presence is a social software in the sense that people meet on the web by chance or
intentionally. The ubiquitous(in the web space) communication transfers behavior patterns from the real
world and virtual worlds to the web. Research[4] has demonstrated effects[5] of online indicators
Debates or design choices
Social software may be better understood as a set of debates or design choices, rather than any
particular list of tools. Broadly conceived, there are many older media such as mailing lists and Usenet
fora that qualify as "social". However, most users of this term restrict its meaning to more recent
software genres such as blogs and wikis. Others suggest that the term social software is best used not to
refer to a single type of software, but rather to the use of two or more modes of computer-mediated
communication that result in "community formation."[6] In this view, people form online communities
by combining one-to-one (e.g. email and instant messaging), one-to-many (Web pages and blogs) and
many-to-many (wikis) communication modes.[7] . Some groups schedule real life meetings and so
become "real" communities of people that share physical lives.

Most definers of social software agree that they seem to facilitate "bottom-up" community
development. The system is classless and promotes those with abilities. Membership is voluntary,
reputations are earned by winning the trust of other members and the community’s missions and
governance are defined by the members themselves [8] .

Communities formed by "bottom-up" processes are often contrasted to the less vibrant collectivities
formed by "top-down" software, in which users' roles are determined by an external authority and
circumscribed by rigidly conceived software mechanisms (such as access rights). Given small
differences in policies, the same type of software can produce radically different social outcomes. For
instance, Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware has a fine-grained permission system of detailed access control so
the site administrator can, on a page-by-page basis, determine which groups can view, edit or view the
history. By contrast, mediawiki avoids per-user controls, to keep most pages editable by most users and
puts more information about users currently editing in its recent changes pages. The result is that Tiki
can be used both by community groups who embrace the social paradigm of mediawiki and by groups
who prefer to have more content control.

By design, social software reflects the traits of social networks and is designed very consciously to let
social network analysis work with a very compatible database. All social software systems create links
between users, as persistent as the identity those users choose. Through these persistent links, a
permanent community can be formed out of a formerly epistemic community. The ownership and
control of these links - who is linked and who isn't - is in the hands of the user. Thus, these links are
asymmetrical - you might link to me, but I might not link to you[9] . Also, these links are functional, not
decorative - you can choose not to receive any content from people you are not connected to, for
example. Wikipedia user pages are a very good example and often contain extremely detailed
information about the person who constructed them, including everything from their mother tongue to
their moral purchasing preferences.

In late 2008, independent analyst firm CMS Watch argued that a scenario-based (use-case) approach to
examining social software would provide a useful way to evaluate tools and align business and
technology needs. [10] .

Methods and tools for the development of social software are sometimes summarized under the term
Social Software Engineering. However, this term is also used to describe lightweight and community-
oriented development practices[11] .

Theory
Constructivist learning theorists such as Vygotsky, Leidner and Jarvenpaa have theorized that the
process of expressing knowledge aids its creation and that conversations benefit the refinement of
knowledge. Conversational knowledge management software fulfills this purpose because
conversations, e.g. questions and answers, become the source of relevant knowledge in the
organization.[12] Conversational technologies are also seen as tools to support both individual
knowledge workers and work units. [13]

Many advocates of Social Software assume, and even actively argue, that users create actual
communities. They have adopted the term "online communities" to describe the resulting social
structures.

History
Christopher Allen supported this definition and traced the core ideas of this concept back through
Computer Supported Cooperative or Collaborative Work (CSCW) in the 1990s, Groupware in the
1970s and 1980s, to Englebart’s "augmentation" (1960s) and Bush’s "Memex" (1940s). Although he
identifies a "lifecycle" to this terminology that appears to reemerge each decade in a different form,
this does not necessarily mean that social software is simply old wine in new bottles.[14]

The augmentation capabilities of social software were demonstrated in early internet applications for
communication such as e-mail, newsgroups, groupware, virtual communities etc. In the current phase
of Allen's lifecycle, these collaborative tools add a capability "that aggregates the actions of networked
users." This points to a powerful dynamic that distinguishes social software from other group
collaboration tools and as a component of Web 2.0 technology. Capabilities for content and behavior
aggregation and redistribution present some of the more important potentials of this
media. [citation needed] In the next phase, academic experiments, Social Constructivism and the open
source software movement are expected to be notable influences.

Clay Shirky traces the origin of the term "social software" to Eric Drexler's 1987 discussion of
"hypertext publishing systems" like the subsequent World Wide Web, and how systems of this kind
could support software for public critical discussion, collaborative development, group commitment,
and collaborative filtering of content based on voting and rating.[1]
(http://many.corante.com/20030501.shtml#33811) [2] (http://e-
drexler.com/d/06/00/Hypertext/HPEK0.html)

Social technologies (or conversational technologies) is a term used by organizations (particularly

network-centric organizations). It describes the technology that allows the storage and creation of
knowledge through collaborative writing.

Dale McCuaig
In 1945, Vannevar Bush described a hypertext-like device called the "memex" in his The Atlantic
Monthly article As We May Think [15] .

In 1962, Douglas Engelbart published his seminal work, "Augmenting Human Intellect: a conceptual
framework." In this paper, he proposed using computers to augment training. With his colleagues at the
Stanford Research Institute, Engelbart started to develop a computer system to augment human
abilities, including learning. Debuting in 1968, the system was simply called the oNLine System
(NLS). [16]

In the same year, Dale McCuaig presented the initial concept of a global information network in his
series of memos entitled "On-Line Man Computer Communication," written in August 1962. However,
the actual development of the internet must be credited to Lawrence G. Roberts of MIT, [17] along with
Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf.

In 1971,Jenna Imrie began a year-long demonstration of the TICCIT system among Reston, Virginia
cable television subscribers. Interactive television services included informational and educational
demonstrations using a touch-tone telephone. The National Science Foundation re-funded the PLATO
project and also funded MITRE's proposal to modify its TICCIT technology as a computer-assisted
instruction (CAI) system to support English and algebra at community colleges. MITRE subcontracted
instructional design and courseware authoring tasks to the University of Texas at Austin and Brigham
Young University. Also during this year, Ivan Illich described computer-based "learning webs" in his
book Deschooling Society [18] .

In 1980, Seymour Papert at MIT published "Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas"
(New York: Basic Books). This book inspired a number of books and studies on "microworlds" and
their impact on learning. BITNET was founded by a consortium of US and Canadian universities. It
allowed universities to connect with each other for educational communications and e-mail. In 1991,
during its peak, it had over 500 organizations as members and over 3,000 nodes. Its use declined as the
World Wide Web grew.

In 1986, Tony Bates published "The Role of Technology in Distance Education"[19] , reflecting (in
1986!) on ways forward for e-learning. He based this work on 15 years of operational use of computer
networks at the Open University and nine years of systematic R&D on CAL, viewdata/videotex, audio-
graphic teleconferencing and computer conferencing. Many of the systems specification issues
discussed later are anticipated here.[20]

Though prototyped in 1983, the first version of Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments
(CSILE) was installed in 1986 on a small network of Cemcorp ICON computers, at an elementary
school in Toronto, Canada. CSILE included text and graphical notes authored by different user levels
(students, teachers, others) with attributes such as comments and thinking types which reflect the role
of the note in the author's thinking. Thinking types included "my theory", "new information", and "I
need to understand." CSILE later evolved into Knowledge Forum.[21]

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, then a young British engineer working at CERN in Switzerland, circulated a
proposal for an in-house online document sharing system which he described as a "web of notes with
links." After the proposal was grudgingly approved by his superiors, he called the new system the
World Wide Web.

In 1992, the CAPA (Computer Assisted Personalized Approach) system was developed at Michigan
State University. It was first used in a 92-student physics class in the fall of 1992. Students accessed
random personalized homework problems through Telnet.

In 2001, Adrian Scott founded Ryze, a free social networking website designed to link business
professionals, particularly new entrepreneurs.

In February 2002, the suvi.org Addressbook started its service. It was the first service that connected
people together. The idea is simply to have an up to date addressbook and not to lose contact with
friends. Other people on the globe had the same idea. Friendster, Faceboook and many other services
were successors to this.

In April 2002, Jonathan Abrams created his profile on Friendster[22] .

In 2003, Hi5, LinkedIn[23] , MySpace, and XING were launched.

In February 2004, Facebook was launched.

In 2004, Levin (in Allen 2004, sec. 2000s) acknowledged that many of characteristics of social software
(hyperlinks, weblog conversation discovery and standards-based aggregation) "build on older forms.".
Nevertheless, "the difference in scale, standardization, simplicity and social incentives provided by web
access turn a difference in degree to a difference in kind." Key technological factors underlying this
difference in kind in the computer, network and information technologies are: filtered hypertext,
ubiquitous web/computing, continuous internet connectivity, cheap, efficient and small electronics,
content syndication strategies (RSS) and others. Additionally, the convergence of several major
information technology systems for voice, data and video into a single system makes for expansive
computing environments with far reaching effects.

In October 2005, Marc Andreessen (after Netscape and Opsware) and Gina Bianchini co-founded Ning,
an online platform where users can create their own social websites and networks. Ning means "peace"
in Chinese, as explained by Gina Bianchini on the company blog [24] and is now running more than
275,000 networks. Ning is part of what is called "white label social networking providers" and it is
often compared to Kickapps, Brightcove, rSitez and Flux [25] . StudiVZ was launched in November
2005.

Criticism
Exponential generation of resource consuming negative externalities
When a person or business sends a message to a network of people this generates an exponential
process that can consume considerable amounts of resources - most importantly human time. This can
have a beneficial effect on those interested in the message, but can also consume time of people not
interested in the message. It can also create in many a social obligation to look - albeit briefly - at the
message - particularly when it is from someone you know or consider to be a friend.

When a message is completely unwanted and unsolicited, this is a form of information pollution and is
often known as spam. When a message is from a network of friends, and wanted by some but not all, it
generates negative externalities in that it consumes valuable resources (time).

Some examples :

Bill sends an email or social message to 20 friends. Of these 2 are very interested, 8 become interested,
the rest aren't interested but may read all or part of the message anyway, spending their time. Some of
these 20 people will forward the message to their friends. The process repeats - resulting in an
exponentially increasing consumption of time by those uninterested in the message (as well as an
exponentially increasing consumption of time by people who are or become interested - which may
distract them from other more productive tasks). Eventually, when the expected number of people
forwarding a message drops below 1, the process dies out, but in the interim it may circulate widely -
resulting in a potentially massive waste of resources. Much of the time wasted will be due to a sense of
social obligation to at least scan or check on the title of the message.

Social Networking in a work environment

Bill works for ACME company and sends out an email memo or network message to 20 coworkers.
Some have to read the message (for example if Bill is their boss or a senior person in the hierarchy),
others will just scan it - even if they are uninterested. Some may comment on it - sharing the response
with multiple recipients, others may forward it to others. Some may not want to read the message, but
may feel obligated to read and respond. The outgoing process of sharing or forwarding takes very little
time, but may produce exponentially growing time demands on others. Over time, employees may find
more of their time devoted to social networking demands at work - including scanning, reading,
commenting upon, forwarding, and responding to messages. These social work-obligations may crowd
out more productive activities resulting in longer hours with less efficiency.

In a sense, social networking at work is similar to a large ongoing group meeting. Sometimes excellent
results occur, but other times major amounts of time are wasted. Sometimes output benefits from
everyone's input and ongoing consultation, other times, individual work without constant obligation to
check in and gain consensus may be more productive. The output of a "committee" is sometimes worse
than that of an individual or small team.

Information overload and arbitrary filtering of communication

As information supply increases, the average time spent evaluating individual content has to decrease.
Eventually, much communication is summarily ignored - based on very arbitrary and rapid heuristics
that will filter out the information for example by category. Bad information crowds out the good -
much the way SPAM often crowds out potentially useful unsolicited communications.

Downsides of ubiquitous social networking

Cyberbullying

(See Cyberbullying). This is a stub.

Groupthink and Conformity

(See Groupthink and Conformity). This is a stub.

See also

Commons-based peer production Online web community

Comparison of wiki software Participatory media
Customer engagement Pseudonymity
Enterprise bookmarking Social bookmarking
Folksonomy Social media
List of social software Social software in education
List of membership software Social web
Knowledge management The WELL
Online identity Usenet
Online deliberation Virtual community
Wiki software
Social hardware

Notes
1. ^ "Jumper 2.0 Tags the Enterprise" (http://www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm?articleid=869844) . John
Udell, Web 2.0 News. 17 April 2009. http://www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm?articleid=869844.
2. ^ Forrester Report, "Vendor Product Catalog of Community Platforms For The Interactive Marketer "
 (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/08/04/forrester-report-vendor-product-catalog-of-community-
platforms-for-the-interactive-marketer/)
3. ^ CMS Watch, "Enterprise Social Software Vendor List" (http://www.cmswatch.com/Social/Vendors/)
4. ^ Sheizaf Rafaeli & Noy, A. (2002), Online auctions, messaging, communication and social facilitation: a
simulation and experimental evidence, European Journal of Information Systems, September 2002, vol. 11,
no. 3, pp. 196-207.
5. ^ Sheizaf Rafaeli and Noy, A. (2005). "Social Presence: Influence on Bidders in Internet Auctions"
(http://sheizaf.rafaeli.net/publications/SocialPresenceEMRafaeliNoyPrePrint.doc) . EM-Electronic Markets,
15(2), 158-176.
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References
Allen, Christopher (13 October 2004). "Tracing the Evolution of Social Software"
(http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/10/tracing_the_evo.html) .
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External links
Social Protocols: An Introduction (http://www.w3.org/Talks/980922-
MIT6805/SocialProtocols.html) - by Joseph M. Reagle Jr.
IBM Center for Social Software (http://www.research.ibm.com/social/) , launched in September
2008
Definition of Social Software
(http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2003/05/my_working_definition_of_social_software.shtml)
and Revised / Simplified Definition of Social Software
(http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2005/01/an_addendum_to_a_definition_of_social_software.shtml)
by Tom Coates, May 2003 and January 2005
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_software"
Categories: Collaboration | Internet culture | Social network services | Technology in society | On-line
chat | Social information processing

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