Social software

Introductory articles

Are you ready for social software?
It's the opposite of project-oriented collaboration tools that places people into groups. Social software supports the desire of individuals to be pulled into groups to achieve goals. And it's coming your way.

Social software and the politics of groups
The thing that makes social software behave differently than other communications tools is that groups are entities in their own right. A group of people interacting with one another will exhibit behaviors that cannot be predicted by examining the individuals in isolation, peculiarly social effects like flaming and trolling or concerns about trust and reputation. This means that designing software for group-as-user is a problem that can't be attacked in the same way as designing a word processor or a graphics tool.
Group as user: flaming and the design of social software
When we hear the word "software," most of us think of things like Word, Powerpoint, or Photoshop, tools for individual users. These tools treat the computer as a box, a self-contained environment in which the user does things. Much of the current literature and practice of software design--feature requirements, UI design, usability testing--targets the individual user, functioning in isolation. And yet, when we poll users about what they actually do with their computers, some form of social interaction always tops the list--conversation, collaboration, playing games, and so on. The practice of software design is shot through with computer-as-box assumptions, while our actual behavior is closer to computer-as-door, treating the device as an entrance to a social space.