Social Software Platforms

I have mentioned new internet-based collaborative services as powerful enablers of networking in previous posts. Let me now try to summarize what these services are, what they have in common, and how they can boost communication and collaboration.

I like to use the term Social Software Platforms (SSP) to describe the whole body of these services. 

On a Social Software Platform, everyone with access can contribute content, 

which is then visible to everyone else with access.

Such content can be text but also other types of media like pictures, videos, or sounds. Examples of popular SSPs are social communities like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, or content platforms like YouTube, Flickr, or the bookmarking service Delicious. These interactive applications have also been termed Web 2.0 technologies.

Two important features of Social Software Platforms are:

1. Co-authoring: participants jointly create content, everyone can contribute something. In the extreme case, multiple contributors work together on the same pages or documents. Wikipedia is the most successful example of productive co-authoring on SSPs.

2. Tagging: participants jointly categorize content. With the help of tags and links, content of any kind is effectively structured and can easily be searched and found. Even the Google search engine is built on this principle and allows us to effectively search and find websites in the vast content pool of the world wide web. The continuous and combined categorizing efforts of many has proven to be much more effective than any single authority could ever be.

Social Software Platforms (SSPs) allow people to interact on a whole new level. 

There is a fundamental difference to more traditional communication channels, such as telephone, email or Instant Messaging. Communication on SSPs is not private between the sender and receiver(s). Instead, communication is visible and searchable for everyone else with access to the SSP. Blogs and Micro-Blogs like Twitter are other examples of Social Service Platforms. Participants don’t have to guess who would be the best person to call or to send an email to in a specific case. They can just broadcast their message or their question to all other participants. The ones that are interested in this message or have an answer to the question can then respond. This can happen within a project team, within a whole organisation, or within an external user-community, to mention some examples. Of course, there is communication, which should remain private and conducted via traditional channels. But much other communication and collaboration can benefit largely from greater visibility.

For the last decade, especially the younger generations have increasingly integrated these interactive services into their daily lives. They appreciate being better connected with each other and they utilize these services as their primary channels and sources to spread and search information and content of all kind. It is only natural for them to demand similarly effective tools at their workplaces.

The above description is an attempt to capture the most basic features of Social Software Platforms. It is not an exhaustive explanation of all elements and functions but I hope it provides a basic understanding even for those of us not too familiar with the various services mentioned here.