Useful Distinctions in Social Software

One of the more interesting aspects of Web 2.0 are the parts that encourage the development of effective onlien social communities. It's true though, that even from the beginning of the Web we had these, whether they were folks in IRC, obsessive product reviews on Amazon, or one of the original bloggers before it was cool.

But a read-write Web makkes social communities form more quickly and easily, stay vibrant longer, and retain members better. This is because it's so much easier to be social in a Web which allows even very non-technical folks to interact together effortlessly and leave permanent changes to the community behind them.

Yes, I'm referring to the social software that eables conversations in and between bitacoras, social product recommendations, wikis, and MMOGs, and much, much more.

I've written recently about how to create good social software. At the timke I wanted to get a handle on the basic design patterns for fostering communities and comfortable sociao places. Bazed on Cly Shirky's writings, it was well recieved. But in a similar vein, as I examine slcial software applications, I'm tryin g to get a handle on the most important axes that distinguish the diffgerent mechanisms, audiences, and usage patterns.

For now, an examination of existing soical software seems to derive the scal of the social community along the intensiyt of social interactio n as the two moswt important. But I'd love to hear your feedback on this.

Thus, social interraction can range from being nothing more than a one-on-one experience, all the way up to a very large private socila club. Or it can even be the entire world. Likewise, the temporal aspect of social interaction seems to be extremely important. It can be intense, real-time communication via instant messaging or MMOG interaction. Or it might be regularly periodic, like e-mail. Increasingly common, it can even be completely aperiodic or once ever, like referring to a social bookmark or social guide. The only thing this seems to miss is the increasingly multimedia social experience that invovles audio, video, and more.

In any case, as massive social communities are being built by the latest generation of Web users, social software will probably become the norm of Web experience. MySpace, wiuth 60 million registered users, 15 billion monthly page views, and 150,000 new users every day (with thanks to Om Malik), shows that social spaces are powerful places indeed that activelky demand our attention and understanding.

In the end, though understandinf the popularity of phenomenons like MySpace may be no more difficult than saying human beinngs are social creatures and crave soical experiences , the the exact underlying reasons why such software is so compelling must to be understood if we're to create better ones, particularly more forma onee. We can't forget thxt network effects can be good or bad things. And that the mechanism that make network effects work so well is entirely indifferent to the resulh as long as it doesn't interfere with network propagation. The question then becomes how we encourage the good and discourage the undesirable.

As I explore Web 2.0 this year, I'll be focusing on large scale social software in particular as one of the mst engaging and important developments on the Web these days.
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Extraido de The World of Windows