A Survey of Social Tools
By Ed Lyons
Social Technology in Education
Conference
8 / 14 / 2009

Contents
What is a “social tool”?
Tools we’ll be covering
Evaluation criteria
Facebook, Ning, Twitter, Open Source, Custom
Analysis and Parting Thoughts

What is a social tool?
These days, what isn’t calling itself a social
tool? (this is the problem with buzzwords)
While a huge number of tools have some
sort of human interaction, the reason we’re
all here today is because of the phenomena
of MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning, Facebook, and
now Twitter.
But today, we’ll be talking about the tools
that allow you to create social networks.

Tools we’ll be covering
Facebook
Ning
Twitter
Open Source
Build your own (Custom)

Evaluation criteria
I have created a set of characteristics that
we will rate certain tools against.
This is a thinking exercise. You should not
choose a tool based on these numbers.
My point is that you shouldn’t do a side-by-
side comparison.
However, this exercise should get you asking
the right questions...

Scorecard
Popularity 1-3
Extensibility 1-3
Trustworthiness 1-3
Startup Cost 1-3
Ease of Setup 1-3
System Integration 1-3
Cost to Maintain 1-3
Available Features 1-3
TOTAL 8-24

Facebook
Popularity 3
Extensibility 2
Trustworthiness 1
Startup Cost 3
Ease of Setup 3
System Integration 1
Cost to Maintain 3
Available Features 3
TOTAL 19

Ning
Popularity 2
Extensibility 2
Trustworthiness 2
Startup Cost 3
Ease of Setup 3
System Integration 1
Cost to Maintain 2
Available Features 3
TOTAL 18

Twitter
Popularity 3
Extensibility 1
Trustworthiness 1
Startup Cost 2
Ease of Setup 1
System Integration 1
Cost to Maintain 3
Available Features 1
TOTAL 13

Open Source
Popularity 1
Extensibility 3
Trustworthiness 3
Startup Cost 1
Ease of Setup 1
System Integration 2
Cost to Maintain 2
Available Features 3
TOTAL 16

Custom
Popularity 1
Extensibility 2
Trustworthiness 3
Startup Cost 1
Ease of Setup 1
System Integration 2
Cost to Maintain 1
Available Features 1
TOTAL 12

Do the totals mean anything?
Facebook 19
Ning 18
Twitter 13
Open Source 16
Custom 12

No, but....
For most people, only a few of these things matter. If
you don’t get high scores on those, forget the rest!
We’ll do the top three (in order) for different uses.
A political party: popularity, cost, features
A community theater group: cost, ease of setup, features
A government agency or large corporation: trust, extensibility,
system integration
A high school: trust, cost, features
A university: features, trust, system integration

Parting Thoughts
For schools, the things you might say:
“If this doesn’t talk to other systems, it will be viewed as a toy.” (System integration)
“For our audience, control over the data is everything.” (Trust)
“We just don’t have any money for this.” (Startup cost)
“A lot of what we need to do just doesn’t exist.” (Extensibility)
“We need something right away.” (Ease of setup)
You’ll discover that there are going to be tradeoffs. How to decide
among them? Optimize for the student experience. If they are excited
about it and are learning, all other obstacles can be overcome. If they
aren’t, it will not matter that the tool can talk to the class schedule
system or that it’s cheap or that it’s easy to maintain.