Designing Social Software

Designing Social Software
Illustration by Bernard Kerr
Micah Alpern: Yahoo! Search

What is Social?

One ->many
social

many -> one
social

Small Groups, status
social

informal
social

size, duration, intensity, exclusivity
social

Architecture of participation
Social activities that combine to create something larger than the sum of their parts. People coming together and through their individual action created something amazing.
Tim O’Reilly

Aids quilt
54 Tons of community participation

Oxford ENGLISH DICTIONARY
it would take 120 years to type the 59 million words of the OED 2nd edition

Wikipedia

Mechanical turk: sheep market
10,000 sheep, two cents at a time

Yahoo! Answers

How you can use social software to build aggregate value * Tom Coats: “Greater than the sum of its parts”

How:
An individual should get value from their contribution.
Tom Coats: “Greater than the sum of its parts”

How:
These contributions should provide value to their peers as well.

How:
The organization that hosts the service should derive aggregate value and be able to expose it back to the users.

How:
Tom Coats: “Greater than the sum of its parts” INDIVIDUAL MOTIVES

How:
Tom Coats: “Greater than the sum of its parts” SOCIAL VALUE INDIVIDUAL MOTIVES

How:
Tom Coats: “Greater than the sum of its parts” BUSINESS / ORGANIZATIONAL VALUE SOCIAL VALUE INDIVIDUAL MOTIVES

Example: Flickr
Individual Motives
Social Value
Business & Organizational Value

Two approaches: to generating aggregate value to generating aggregate value

Consensus many contributions make one voice Polyphony many voices with emergent order

Consensus many contributions make one voice Polyphony many voices with emergent order Generates canonical or definitive representations of data.

Consensus many contributions make one voice Polyphony many voices with emergent order Generates canonical or definitive representations of data. Generates lots of material, makes it comprehensible

Polyphony
What's the motivation? Personal, Social, Community
When designing the incentives: Actions/behaviors you want to incent Points == crack (use with care) Competition can hamper cooperation Thumb rating != quality (fine for engagement)
Social signals are key to relevance. Implicate signals are better.

Consensus many contributions make one voice

Consensus many contributions make one voice Fernanda Viegas: History Flow

32 PAGES
218 REFERENCES
16 ILLUSTRATIONS

1 PAGE
0 REFERENCES
0 ILLUSTRATIONS

wikitorial
PROJECT DATE CLIENT 2005 LA TIMES

How does wikipedia work? PROJECT DATE CLIENT SEPT 2008 PHOEBE AYERS , CHARLES MATT HEWS, BEN YATES

How does Wikipedia work?
Cultural & social norms
Peripheral awareness
Transparency
Accountability
Policy: Community defined processes for self governance

DATE CLIENT SESSION 5 WP:LOST

How does Wikipedia work?
Cultural & social norms
Peripheral awareness
Transparency
Accountability
Policy: Community defined processes for self governance

5 Pillars, WP:NPOV, WP:ADMIN, WP:Patrol
Values -> Attract certain people -> Cultural Norms -> Policies and roles

Commons-based governance (offline)
Elinor Ostrom’s Research

Designing Social Software

by Micah Alpern on Mar 09, 2009

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Designing Social Software — Presentation Transcript