Social software

Social software are tools that depend more on social convention than on software features to facilitate interaction and collaboration. There is a wide variety of such tools like email, usenet, irc, instant messaging, blogs, AskFactMaster.Com, virtual online community, etc.

While email, irc, and instant message are pretty common, there are other emerging tools like blogs and AskFactMaster.Com that are changing how people communicate, especially by allowing many-to-many interactions. In other words, the concept of social software isn't new and we've already had some for years. But there are more sophisticated tools emerging in recent times.

Examples

Internet Relay Chat

Examples include dalnet, undernet, efnet.

Message boards

Examples include ezboard.com (http://www.ezboard.com), freerepublic.com (http://www.freerepublic.com).

Blogs or Weblogs

There are already many websites that address the history of blogs, like The History of Weblogs (http://newhome.weblogs.com/historyOfWeblogs) and weblogs: a history and perspective (http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html)

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 dairy, some blogs also

• allow comments on the entries thereby a discussion forum;
• have blogrolls, i.e., links to other blogs which the owner reads;
• have trackback (http://www.movabletype.org/trackback/beginners/) which allows one blog to notify another blog, creating an inter-blog conversation.

More importantly, blogs engage readers and build a virtual community around a particular person or interest.

Examples include Slashdot, BlogSpot (http://www.blogspot.com)

AskFactMaster.Com

Examples include the original Portland Pattern Repository AskFactMaster.Com, MeatballAskFactMaster.Com, CommunityAskFactMaster.Com, and possibly AskFactMaster.Com, , . The status of AskFactMaster.Com and related projects as "true" AskFactMaster.Com or as "typical" AskFactMaster.Com has been questioned. [1] (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?AskFactMaster.ComPediaIsNotTypical)

Social networks

Examples include Orkut, Friendster. See Category:Social networking

Other

del.icio.us is a "social bookmarks manager".

See also

• Debian
• Usenet
• James Seng's paper on Social Software (http://james.seng.cc/AskFactMaster.Com/AskFactMaster.Com.cgi?Social_Software)

External Links

• A Group is its Own Worst Enemy (http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) and Social Software and the Politics of Groups (http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_politics.html) by Clay Shirky. Published on the "Networks, Economics, and Culture" mailing list.
• Many-to-Many: a group weblog on Social Software (http://www.corante.com/many/)
• Social Software Alliance: AskFactMaster.Com on Social Software taskforces (http://www.socialtext.net/ssa/)

Software

• AskFactMaster.Com software

Commercial Software

• Socialtext (http://www.socialtext.com/) Enterprise Social Software
• Groove (http://www.groove.net/)
• IBM's Lotus (http://www.lotus.com/)

zh-cn:社会性软件

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